With my newly-revived interest in Postcrossing, I’ve been checking out a few blogs written by other members. There are a few standout favorites and they have inspired me to start my own postcard-only blog (more on that soon). Most of these detail the cards sent to the bloggers and many offer card exchanges. I’m quite amazed at how many countries some of these men and women have received cards from! I’ve also stumbled across a few blogs that detail collecting vintage postcards but, for some reason, most of these hold little interest for me right now.
For anybody interested in sending and receiving postcards worldwide, the first stop has to be the Postcrossing site itself, closely followed by the Postcrossing Blog. It’s a wonderful source of information about postcard collecting, profiles of postal workers and other Postcrossers, and assorted news tidbits. I especially enjoy the adventures of the “Little Postmen”, small toy mail carriers who are sent to various members around the world to be photographed at the sites of various cities. I’d like to find a similar Thai toy to include in my photos around Phuket.
SL Liew collects postcards sent to his home in Penang, Malaysia on the wonderfully-named Postcard a la Carte. He is trying to get 10 postcards sent from every country. I’m particularly jealous of his cards from Greenland, the Principality of Sealand, and the British Antarctic Territory. I just realized that despite numerous journeys to Penang in 2012 while getting my visa sorted out, I still don’t have a single postcard from there!
Another entertaining blog is Susan’s Postcard Exchange on which she encourages readers to send her a postcard to which she will respond with one of her own (as do most of the other bloggers below), either from her home in Wales or send during one of her travels.
World On Postcards, written by Chris in Poland, was the first blog I found that included cropped-images of just the stamps and postmarks from the address sides of the cards. I’d long struggled with whether I should include the full message and my address in the scans when I would write up my Postcrossing cards. Now I have a solution! Thanks, Chris. I’ll be sending you a postcard soon…
Seemingly more ambitious is Anna who desires to receive a postcard from every island in the world that has a mailbox. Since starting this project just three months ago, she has received 67 postcards from 42 different islands! She has yet to list one from Phuket so I think I’ll fire off a card to her this week…
Lillishe’s Postcrossing Blog has more writing than postcard images but I like what she has to write.
Postcard Footprints From Around The World is written by Fiona on the island of Borneo in East Malaysia.
Postcards from my Mailbox offers an interesting look at, among other things, architecture on postcards. The Canadian blogger also has a particular interest in animals and mapcards.
Susannah from Canada blogs about her postcards on SuSu’s Postcards.
One of the vintage cards sites that caught my eye was *Postcard Gems with the wonderful mapcard of the Kansas Turnpike at the top on the day I stumbled across it. I lived quite near to the Bonner Springs exit for many years.
A few other postcard blogs of note include:
My Postcard and Stamp Week by Justin in Germany
Many of these postcard blogs are based in Canada, including Snail Mail Diaries.
The Postman Loves Me features vintage cards.
Stamps I’ve Met seems to be defunct now with the last entry made almost two years ago. Still beautiful to look at…
There are many other postcard collecting blogs. In fact, I had a hard time limiting this list to just twenty. Oh? You say you count just nineteen?
Well, number twenty is my brand-new only-postcards blog which I’m calling “Please, Mr. Postman!” after the 1961 hit by The Marvelettes (which I prefer to The Beatles’ 1963 version).
Launched a few days ago, I’ve written two entries so far – one including a self-designed Phuket postcard and one marking the king of Thailand’s birthday. I plan to buy a new scanner next week (my old one recently failing after nearly a decade of faithful service) so I can digitize my postcard collection. I’m currently writing about some of the other cards that I’ve scanned previously and will be publishing those soon. Please check out “Please, Mister Postman!” and let me know what you think.
Mark Joseph Jochim 