It’s hard to believe, but Postcrossing has just turned 20. What started in 2005 as a way to send and receive postcards from strangers around the world has grown into a global project with more than 800,000 participants. This month, the community is marking the milestone with meetups, new stamps, and a shared celebration of everything the project has become.
What is Postcrossing?
Postcrossing is a free project that lets people send and receive postcards from others around the world. The idea is simple: for every postcard you send, you get one back from someone else. You don’t choose who you’re matched with which is super exciting. It could be literally anyone (well as long as they’re registered), anywhere, which is part of the fun.
Once you register and send your first card, the system tracks it using a unique code. When it arrives and gets logged by the recipient, your address goes into the pool so you can receive one in return. Over time, you build up a collection of cards from all over the world, each with a message, stamp and story of its own. I’m hoping to build up a bunch of postcards and use them to decorate the flat.
I only joined a month ago and have received one postcard so far. It came from Germany and was from a lovely girl who was also into video games! It’s a small thing, but getting something through the letterbox from a stranger made my whole week. That’s what Postcrossing is about.
Celebrating 20 Years of Postcrossing
Postcrossing officially launched in July 2005, which means the project has now been connecting people through postcards for two full decades. To mark the occasion, the community has come together in all sorts of ways, both online and in person.
There are 179 meetups happening around the world, including events in Germany, the USA and Poland. Some even have special cancellation postmarks created just for the anniversary. Online, postcrossers have been sharing photos in an anniversary gallery, each showing themselves with 20 postcards in hand. There’s also a Postcard Lounge, a silent online space where people can sit and write cards together, wherever they are.
In the Netherlands, PostNL has released a special stamp to celebrate the milestone. Designed by Sandra Smulders, the stamp uses bold shapes and diagonal lines to reflect the idea of connection and exchange. The red, white and blue colour scheme also gives a quiet nod to the Dutch flag. The stamp is available to buy now on the PostNL webshop.
Why Stamp Collectors Love Postcrossing
For stamp collectors, Postcrossing opens up a world of possibilities. Every postcard comes with a stamp from another country, often chosen by someone who’s taken a bit of care to pick something nice. The fun thing with Postcrossing is that you can specify on your profile the kind of cards you’d like to get, no prizes for guessing what’s on my list! Some people even decorate their cards with stickers or washi tape, which makes each one feel personal and worth keeping.
You can’t track or know where your next postcard is going to come from, so the surprise is always amazing. You never know what it will look like or who’s written it. It definitely can have the potential to lead you down new collecting paths, whether that’s thematic stamps (my current fave), postal stationery or postmarks from places you hadn’t considered before.
Postcrossing gives you a reason to keep an eye on the letterbox, and for a lot of collectors, it’s not just about the stamps, it’s about the stories that come with them.
How to Join Postcrossing
Joining Postcrossing is free and it’s a really quick sign up process. You’ll need to create an account at postcrossing.com and add your address so you can receive postcards. Make sure you add your name to your address too, I did this wrong at first because my name was on my profile – but it needs to be here too!
Once you’re signed up, you can request to send your very first postcard. The website will give you a name, an address and a unique code to write on the postcard. After you’ve sent your card, all you have to do is wait, sometimes for what feels like an eternity. When it arrives and gets registered by the person who received it, your address will go into the system and someone else will be assigned to send you a card…INCREDIBLE.
You can have 5 postcards travelling at once, depending on how many you want to send. I think it’s cost me just under £4 to send each postcard from the UK.
Postcrossing and Stamp Collecting
Postcrossing has been around long enough that a bunch of countries have released official stamps to celebrate it. The Netherlands was the first, back in 2011, and they’ve just done it again for the 20th anniversary. Other countries that have joined in over the years include Germany, Austria, Finland, Ireland, and a few more.
Each one’s a little different, but they usually lean into themes like connection, postcards flying around the world, or colourful designs that feel very Postcrossing-y. They’ve become a nice little sub-collection for a lot of people who use the site.
If you like modern issues, themed stamps or anything postal-related, these are well worth a look.
I got a lot of information from this post from the postcrossing website, including pages such as:
