Postcrossing Blog

Did you hear that sound? It was the sound of postcard number 75 million reaching its recipient and being registered!! Woohoo! 🎉 We’re ¾ of the way to 100 million postcards, which feels like a little unreal… but it’ll still take some years to get there, so we have time to get used to that idea. 😅

And since we’re talking about numbers, January is usually a period where we like to stop a moment to reflect and plan, so it’s a good time to go over how Postcrossing did in 2023. Let’s look at numbers!

4,955,460 postcards received

That’s 38,008 postcards less than in 2022… but overall, not that much of a difference, especially considering all the postage increases.

28.24 average travel days and 18.67 median travel days

That’s a little bit higher than last year, with mail taking on average about a day longer to get to its destinations… which may be explained by the next statistic:

26,736,461,421 kms (16,613,266,909 miles) traveled

26.7 billion kilometers (or 16.6 billion miles)! Pretty impressive, right? Even though we sent less postcards overall, our postcards traveled a 5.5% higher total distance than in 2022! There are still quite a few postal routes not working at the moment, which influences where postcards can be sent.

19,960 kms (12,403 miles) was the longest distance traveled

As is becoming tradition, it’s a postcard from Spain to New Zealand that takes the medal for the card that travels the longest distance! Postcard ES-731128 took 50 days to cover the 19,960 kms that separate Úbeda in southeast Spain) to Tauranga, in New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty!

The average distance a postcard traveled in Postcrossing in 2023 was much less than that though — about 5,395 kms (or 3,352 miles).

1,146,458 postcards were sent from Germany

Woohoo! Our German members have once again taken the cake, thanks to their enthusiasm, reasonable postage prices and to Deutsche Post’s Cards for Literacy campaign… but the USA has slowly been closing their distance in the rankings! Could they one day surpass Germany? We’ll have to see!

For the people who are new to this statistic, let me take a moment to explain that this is the number of postcards sent from these countries which were registered in 2023. That means that there are some postcards in there that were sent in 2022 and registered in 2023, and there are also some postcards requested in 2023 that are not counted in this statistic (those are still traveling and will likely be registered over the next few weeks/months). Looking at postcards registered within a certain timeframe and sticking to it makes it easier to compare with previous years though, so that’s what we usually do.

Shelleh sent the most postcards

So here’s a curious fact: this year, the top 5 senders in Postcrossing were all from the USA: Shelleh (2,483 postcards sent), BeckyS (2,391), suegathman (2,357), Djain (2,284) and christelvonderpost (2,145). All of these members have chosen to also exchange postcards with their own country, which, in a big country like the USA, means that they often send postcards domestically, speeding things up. If we remove domestic postcards from the equation, the members who have sent the most postcards internationally in 2023 were CarminaBurana (Canada), ned44440 (Ireland), diams1 (Switzerland), SMatti (Finland) and tiinama (Finland)!

Åland Islands sent the most postcards per capita

And here’s the usual ranking per capita, for countries and territories with more than 10 members. Some shifting up and down the rankings, but not a lot of big changes overall.

October 1, 2023 was the day in which more postcards were sent

No big surprise there! 🙃 World Postcard Day is the day to send postcards, and postcrossers have embraced this cause with relish. Apart from this day (and September 30, which is already World Postcard Day in some countries), the other top 10 days with most postcards sent in Postcrossing are all in the first three months of the year.

January 18, 2023 was the day in which more postcards were received

A lot of postcards from Germany arrive all throughout January, so there are several January days in the ranking of “days with most postcards received”. Other peak days are 11th October (World Postcard Day cards, we assume), 29 of December (post-holidays)… and 31st of May, for some inexplicable reason! 🤔

Postcards were sent from 221 countries and received on 159 countries

So you might be wondering, how can postcards be sent from 221 countries (and territories), when Postcrossing only has members in 201? It’s the magic of Travel Mode! This year, our members really went for those exotic locations, and we saw postcards being sent from places like Cocos Islands, Burkina Faso, Nauru or Turks and Caicos! That said, the number of countries and territories in which our members have received postcards has also increased (from 153 in 2022 to 159 last year), which is good news!

13,015 new forum topics and 805,416 forum posts in 2023

Woohoo! The forum continues to grow, little by little, which is heartwarming. Community is about people coming together, and the forum is the place where that happens for postcrossers.

And speaking of forum, here’s a new statistic for this annual post:

1,826 meetups in 62 countries

Pretty impressive, right? We wish there was a way of quantifying how many friendships have been made in the years the project has been running, but these things are hard to count. Still, it’s nice to know connections are being made and friends are getting together around postcards!

11,731 emails replies

And last (but definitely not least), our support team has replied to an Everest-sized amount of queries by you all, sent to us via the contact form. One of our goals for 2023 was to get some help dealing with these, and we did — Iris (aka scrutiny) is now part of our support team, replying to your requests for help every day… and helping the rest of the team have a bit more time for other tasks.

That’s it for 2023! Time to look ahead, plan 2024 and make exciting things happen! What will YOU be up to this year? And do you have any exciting postcard-related goals you’d like to share?

PS: Some of you might have noticed we didn’t run the usual annual Postcrossing census last December. It’s a lot of work to process all the census data, and since these things don’t tend to change that much in the span of a year, we’ve decided to switch it to a biennial format. It’ll be back in December 2024, but in the meantime, you can send your tips and feedback to the team through the contact form… or on a postcard, for bonus points! 😊

PPS: For those of you who would like to see longer rankings (which are cumbersome to put on a blog post), here they are!

Another year, another opportunity to compile some statistics and look at Postcrossing through numbers! This year we added some new data, so let’s dig in, starting by how many postcards arrived in 2022:

4,993,468 postcards received

That’s 5.6% less postcards than last year… which is completely understandable, given the state of the world.

27.53 average travel days and 17.75 median travel days

The average number of days a postcard travels until it reaches its destination is a little higher than before… but the median travel time is not, which is good news! The median is a better statistic than the average, as it is less affected by the extremes (which are usually outliers). This year’s median travel time of 17.75 days is lower’s than last year’s 18.12 days.

25,338,239,130 kms (15,744,451,857 miles) traveled

A number that is just 1.7% lower than last year, despite the 5.6% difference in postcards received… which indicates that, on average, our postcards travelled a little bit further in 2022. Still, a huge distance that our collective postcards have travelled… the equivalent of 632,270 laps around the world or 32,958 return trips to the moon!

20,001 kms (12,428 miles) was the longest distance traveled

For the third year in a row, it was a postcard traveling between Spain and New Zealand that accumulated the longest distance in Postcrossing. This year, we even broke the 20,000km record, with postcard ES-683224, which traveled between Pontevedra (in the region of Galicia, in the north of Spain), and Greymouth, on the west coast of New Zealand’s south island.

The average distance that a postcard traveled was about a fourth of that: 5,074 kms (3,153 miles).

1,197,918 postcards were sent from Germany

No surprise here, our very enthusiastic German members top the chart once more! So, looking at all the postcards that were received in 2022, where were they sent from? Here’s the top 20 countries on this ranking:

The number of “Postcards sent” is a counterintuitive metric, so let me make a little pause here for a quick explanation: this is the number of postcards sent from these countries which were registered in 2022. That means that there are some postcards in there that were sent in 2021 and registered in 2022, and there are also some postcards requested in 2022 that are not counted in this statistic (those are still traveling and will likely be registered over the next few weeks/months). Limiting this number to a certain timeframe and sticking to it makes it easier to compare with previous years though, so that’s what we usually do.

Willi sent the most postcards

A lot of postcards were put on their way by our German postcrossers, with Willi at the top of the rankings with a total of 2,319 postcards sent (that were received in 2022), followed very closely by OlafArens, with 2,311 postcards — that was a tight race! The rest of the top 5 members with most postcards sent is composed of Sidolix (2,265 postcards), elbe (2,236 postcards), and ho-modellfan (2,235 postcards).

Åland Islands sent the most postcards per capita

No surprise here, Åland continues to be the top country in postcards per capita. Here’s the rest of the top 20 list:

(*) This ranking is calculated per 1,000 inhabitants, for countries with at least 10 members.

October 1, 2022 was the day in which more postcards were sent

World Postcard Day continues to be the day in which more postcards are sent, which makes us extra happy! Other days with lots of postcards sent are December 1st (the start of the Postcards for a Good Cause campaign), and also random days in January and February.

January 12, 2022 was the day in which more postcards were received

Looks like maybe a mini avalanche of postcards arrived to their destinations after the holiday period in December! Other good days are a little scattered throughout January and February, and around the middle of October too.

Postcards were sent from 201 countries and received on 153 countries

Can you guess why the big difference in numbers? That’s right — quite a few postcards from exotic locations are sent in Travel Mode every year. Often, there are no active members in those countries or territories, so there is no one there to receive postcards… but they can still be sent from there by traveling postcrossers, to delight some unsuspecting postcrossers!

12,669 new forum topics and 804,060 forum posts in 2022

This is a new statistic, and one we’re quite happy about! The forum is buzzing with activity these days, with games, chats and swaps happening all around the clock. Hurray!

13,127 emails replies

This is the number of replies sent to emails that came to us via the site’s contact form, with requests for help. That’s a lot of emails, and a big chunk of how the team’s time is spent… so this year, we’ll be looking for some help with support tasks. If this is something up your alley, keep an eye on the forum! We’ll post something there soon.

And I think that’s about it for this year’s statistics! What do you think? Does any number stand out to you, or are there perhaps other things you think we should be tracking and comparing, year to year? Let us know in the comments!

PS: We know it’s always frustrating when your country is not featured in a top ranking… so we published the full country list on this forum post, as well as a few more rankings.

PS – Happy Lunar New Year! 🎊

Eager for more statistics? Here we go, for part 2 of the census analysis! There’s actually only a couple of things left we’d like to go over in this post, so let’s dive straight into it.

First up, let’s talk about blog content — what are postcrossers’ favorite topics to read about here?

This was a multiple choice question, and of the people who replied, most like to read about postal history and interesting postal facts… which is great, because so do we! 😊 Statistics and friendship stories are also popular, with the rest of the choices being a little more evenly distributed. There’s definitely something for everyone! This blog is actually a part of the website we’re rather proud of, as there has been an average of one post per week here for the last 14 years, if you can believe it! Looking back at the long archive of posts is really gratifying.

Moving on to the big questions… what do people like or dislike the most about Postcrossing? Let’s look at the things that annoy us all first:

Keep in mind that this was a multiple answer question, so people could pick up to 3 replies or write a different one. This was an open question in the previous census, so the answers were a bit all over the place… 😅 We tried to condense the main replies we saw, so we could get a better idea of their distribution.

Clearly, expired or lost postcards are a big source of frustration with this hobby, as no one likes to send a postcard that ends up not being acknowledged. Over the years, the Postcrossing system has been improved to include several automated rules and triggers focused on reducing this issue, including setting accounts to inactive, sending reminders, and blocking or closing accounts. Because of these automations, the percentage of postcards that goes unregistered has been steadily decreasing over the years (*), and we’ll continue to do our best to further minimize it. We know that this percentage will never be zero, but we still have a few different ideas that we’re planning to test throughout the year that will hopefully further lower these numbers.

Other annoying things include the lack of geographical diversity, demanding profiles and the fact that the website isn’t very mobile-friendly yet… all things we’ve been addressing and tweaking in different ways, and which continue to be on the top of on our long to-do list. Beyond these big ones, some postcrossers also remarked on empty registration messages, postcards with short messages, empty profiles or those written in languages other than English, or receiving too many postcards at once, among other issues. We think these are fair grievances, and having a clear ranking of their “annoyingness level” helps us prioritize how we tackle them.

And, last but not least, what do people like best about Postcrossing?

We purposely didn’t include sending and receiving postcards as an option, as we assume everyone likes those parts (and there was a separate question about that). Beside those, contacting with people all over the world seems to be the #1 thing members like about Postcrossing, but its a tight margin separating that answer from others like the surprise and randomness, learning about other countries and cultures, or being able to make others happy. Less people highlight being part of a community or the creative aspect of the hobby, which we definitely understand, as those are not for everyone.

And that’s a wrap on this year’s census analysis! We haven’t yet finished going through all the feedback on the last question of the census, in which we asked you to give us ideas of things to improve or just share your thoughts about Postcrossing — the number of comments is a bit overwhelming, in a very nice way. 😊 A big thank you to all of you who took the time to fill out the census, for your kind words and for the many ideas of things to improve and think about!

(*) There are two notable hiccups in the expiration rates lowering trend over the years, which we monitor closely as we know these are important to Postcrossing. Mid-2017, Russian Post had an issue that caused lots of mail to be stuck somewhere for a few months, causing the postcards to expire before being delivered later in the year. Also, in the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, when flights started being cancelled and there were no alternative routes in place, a lot of mail got stuck for a long time. Both these incidents have been resolved (through improvements to the mail service, and with the help of the Postal Monitor), and the overall trend continues to slope downwards, towards a lower expiration rate.

We’ve finally completed the analysis the 2021's census results, so here we are to report back and do some introspection! 🤓

This time around, we’ve greatly simplified some of the answers so that we could streamline the analysis, and also created a separate form for our members in China, who couldn’t access Google Forms last year. In total, 23,329 postcrossers replied the census, and here we have to make the usual caveat to point out that while this is a decent sized sample, we can’t quite extrapolate that this sample portrays all postcrossers. For instance, some people may be less likely to reply to questionnaires (maybe they struggle with English), which might skew the results. So, please take the results with a grain of salt!

The basic demographics haven’t changed much from 2020, so we’ll skip that overview this year but feel free to have a look at last year’s post for the rundown. One question we did tweak was the one about where people live, to give it more granularity beyond the rural/urban divide. Here are the replies:

Last year’s results were 75% urban and 25% rural, and this year we see these numbers subdivide into smaller categories. It would perhaps be relevant to know how most people define large vs small cities or towns though, as this definition is likely to vary from country to country. Maybe this could be something to further improve next year.

Another new question for 2021's census was proficiency in the English language:

I guess there’s not much of a surprise here: most postcrossers are either fluent or relatively comfortable using English to communicate, but 1.9% mentions not being able to communicate at all in that language… This percentage is likely to be even higher, as we imagine long surveys are a challenge for someone that struggles with the language. One advantage that postcards have over letters is that they are smaller, and thus less daunting for non-native speakers. We know many members use Postcrossing to improve and gain confidence in their foreign language skills, and we hope the project can continue to be a good tool for this purpose.

I don’t think we showed this graph last year, so here it is: where did people hear about Postcrossing?

The biggest slice on that pie is still through friends or relatives, which is really cool — it’s great to know that you guys enjoy Postcrossing so much that you brag about it to your loved ones! 💙 Many of you simply stumble on the project while searching online or browsing social media, and a smaller slice learned about it on offline media (like radio or newspapers). Good to know!

Next, what is everyone’s favorite part of the core Postcrossing activity, sending or receiving postcards?

Turns out, both — which is brilliant! The percentage of people who reply “both” has even increased since the last time we did a similar poll back in 2017.

We also asked how easy the Postcrossing website is to use, and most people (63%) replied it was super easy, 29% chose easy, 6% picked the middle of the scale option and around 1.3% picked one of the last 2 options, indicating they have some or a lot of trouble using the website. Some of these issues were pointed out in the disability question of the census, giving us good tips of things to improve.

And last but not least, let’s look at friendships! Have you become friends with other postcrossers?

As expected in a project that is mostly about sending postcards to strangers across the world, the majority of people who replied to this question have not made friends through Postcrossing. Despite this, a significant amount of you mention having made friends — mostly online friends, but 10% have also met their new friends in person. It’s really cool to think that postcards and serendipity were the starting point of these connections!

There’s a lot more to unpack in the census, especially what people like/dislike about Postcrossing… so we’re saving that for a second post. Stay tuned for more insights soon!

According to the census so far, 42% of postcrossers love to see posts about statistics on the blog… so here we are, reporting for statistician duty to give you an overview of last year in numbers! 👷 If you’re like us, you might want to open 2020's stats post on a new tab, to compare the values for the 2 years.

Ok, so first things first, the number of postcards received in 2021:

5,289,716 postcards received

Pretty impressive! This is a good bit (17%) above the total for the previous year, and even better than the number for 2 years ago, pre-pandemic. Woohoo!

26.94 days (average) and 18.12 (median) travel time

Average travel times are slightly faster than the previous year, but the median (a better calculation that doesn’t put as much emphasis on the outliers) is worse… and that is a little surprising to us as we expected both metrics to be lower by now. We hoped that postal services would have had enough time and pandemic experience at this point to sort things out between them, find alternative ways to ship mail, or just close routes temporarily until stuff has been fixed. 😩 Sigh.

25,774,489,281 kms (or 16,015,520,179 miles) of total distance traveled

This number is almost 4 billion more than last year, which is to be expected since we had quite a bit more postcards received as well.

19,929 kms (or 12383 miles) was the longest distance traveled by a postcard

The postcard doing this very very long trip was NZ-224513, which started its journey in Te Awamutu, Waikato, New Zealand and traveled all the way around the world to Cuevas de San Marcos, in Andalusia, Spain, arriving 32 days later! Pretty cool to think that a postcard connected these 2 places which are so far apart that they’re almost perfect antipodes. For comparison, the average distance a Postcrossing postcard traveled in 2021 was 4873 kms (or 3028 miles).

1,269,834 postcards were sent from Germany 🇩🇪

Once again, our enthusiastic German members have surpassed all the expectations and broke their previous record of 1,004,831 postcards sent in a year! This was also the year in which they crossed into Postcard IDs with 8 digits — the first country to do so in Postcrossing. 😊 Here are the top 20 countries and territories, by number of postcards sent:

The number of “Postcards sent” is a little counterintuitive, so I’ll explain a bit: this is the number of postcards sent from these countries which were registered in 2021. That means that there are some postcards in there that were sent in 2020 and registered in 2021, and there are also many postcards requested in 2021 that are not counted in this statistic (those are still traveling and will likely be registered over the next few weeks/months). Limiting this number to a certain timeframe and sticking to it makes it easier to compare with previous years though, so we’re going with it.

Although some countries have moved up and down the ranking, the countries in the top 20 are more or less the same as last year, with the only difference being Ukraine entering the list and Hong Kong leaving it.

What about top senders?

Sidolix sent the most postcards (registered in 2021)

Hannes (aka Sidolix) sent 2555 postcards and recovered his top pole position from 2019. 😊 Willi (2480), uttia4a (2476), hepman (2451) and Antje321 (2392) complete the top 5, all from Germany.

We’re not sure how these top members do it, but these numbers are super impressive… If you send a lot of postcards every year, maybe come share your secrets with us in the comments below!

Åland Islands sent the most postcards per capita

Looking at number of postcards per capita, the Åland Islands still reign supreme! Here’s a look at other countries and territories in the top 20:

Note that the number represents postcards sent per 1,000 inhabitants, and only countries with more than 10 members are featured. Not many changes in the list, but Macao and Liechtenstein are newcomers to the top 20!

October 1, 2021 was the day in which more postcards were sent

No surprises there, right? Postcrossers sent more than 60,000 postcards on World Postcard Day this year, waaaaay above what we would consider a “normal” day in Postcrossing. The next best day of the year is the kick off of the December campaign on December 1st, with about 20,000 postcards sent. Apart from these 2 days, a lot of the days with most postcards getting sent seem to happen around March.

While we were looking at these numbers, we thought it would also be cool to look at the day with most postcards received…

December 30, 2021 was the day in which more postcards were received

A total of 21,225 postcards were registered in this day, though we confess we have no idea why this day in particular. 🤷‍♀️ Maybe there was some backlog of mail that got stuck somewhere because of the holiday season, and got delivered just as the year ended?

And that’s it for this year’s roundup of statistics! What do you think? Were you surprised by some of these numbers, or are there perhaps other stats that you’d be interested to hear about? Please do share them on the comments!

PS: We know it’s always frustrating when your country is not featured in a top ranking… so we published the full country rankings on this forum post.

PS2: Speaking of statistics, the second annual census is about to close, so make sure you submit your replies if you haven’t done so yet. You’ll find the link to it on the email we’ve sent some weeks ago.