Article about postcards and Postcrossing on "Il Post" (Italy)

Postcrossing Press, media & spreading the word
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I just found out that the Italian online newspaper “Il Post” has an article today about the history of postcards and their role in today’s world. The last part of the article talks about Postcrossing :heart_eyes:
The article is in Italian and is free to read (like all articles on the website), I think it can be easily translated with Google:

This is the last part of the article where Postcrossing is explained, translated:

“Postcrossing exists since 2005, a website developed by the Portuguese Paulo Magalhães. Magalhães says he “loved receiving postcards but didn’t know many people to exchange them with”: so he decided to create a site that would help him get in touch with other people who liked to send and receive postcards, like in a modern chain of correspondence. Eighteen years later, Magalhães says the platform has enabled the exchange of more than 57 million postcards between 700,000 people from 213 countries.”

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Interesting article! I found the information there has matched my own experiences with buying and sending postcards. When I started travelling 20-25 years ago, it was easy to find postcards everywhere, and many tourist shops also sold stamps at their stores. It was really rare that I’d have to search for a post office to buy stamps there. But now, it’s rare to find postcards except in the most touristy places, but the selection is a lot less, and most shops no longer carry stamps. But I still do it whenever I can, and I try to buy postcards in more remote places, even if they are not that interesting, since I have no idea when (or if) I’ll find any more.

For example, in Iraq (Kurdistan) I found no postcards whatsoever (not surprising as there is no tourist infrastructure to speak of), and in Sudan I found some not very nice ones at a museum in Khartoum, but I bought them anyway since I was happy to find them. But they didn’t have stamps and I had no chance to find a post office before I left, so couldn’t post from there. I know these are extreme examples, but on a recent trip to Cambodia, which is very heavily touristed, I found it hard to find any interesting postcards whatsoever. This was my fourth trip there so I already had many from previous trips. The only good cards I found were at the airport, which I found surprising.

Back to the article, I learned a new expression through Google Translate: The game is not very much worth the candle. (Il gioco non vale molto la candela)

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Thank you for posting the article isabetta :slight_smile:
I think it is a good article, and I agree with it on many points. They just forgot to mention, among the reasons for the decline of postcards, also the increase in the cost of mailings.
At least as far as Italy is concerned, the rates for sending a postcard have tripled in the last 18 years.

I like that expression. It is quite common in Italian, and it also has an interesting origin : during the Middle Ages, when of course there was no electricity, people had to uses candles if they wanted to play chess or cards at evenings. But candles were expensive, so if the game was not a good game, it was not “worth the candle” :slight_smile:

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I agree re: the postage going up, our most expensive letter rate here in Australia is $4.30! Granted, postcards usually end up cheaper, but it’s sad that it’s so expensive to participate in this hobby these days :frowning: This article looks interesting! I’d love to write something like this but not sure where to submit it to…

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I wrote to magazines or newspapers about Postcrossing three times, and on two occasions my letter has been published. The papers had published an article about the mail or about the fact that people no longer write postcards, and I had addressed my letter to the paper’s editors.

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I’m a uni prof teaching English to Japanese students, and as part of our curriculum renewal in the language department, I’ve been thinking about adding in a unit about more ‘analog’ activities, with a section specifically about postcards and Postcrossing.

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I was a bit surprised that the article mentions that sending postcards is still relatively common among the French, but it doesn’t tell anything about the Germans :slight_smile:

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