Cards that are not available in my country?

hello,

let us share the types of cards that are not available in each other’s country.

perhaps this helps when people fill their profile regarding which cards they prefer to receive on Postcossing by knowing about other countries’ situation?

for example, in Japan, we do not have cards of :

  • war related, except cards from Hiroshima and Nagasaki (peace monuments)
  • grave yards / cemetaries
  • books
  • not much black and white
  • weird cards
  • sadly not much wild animals
  • not much portraits of people
  • skulls
  • nude / erotica

etc.

how about your country’s situation?

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We only have touristic cards beacause people don’t write many postcards. Only vacationers buy these. Maybe in art museums, but that’s it. So I buy most online.

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I find it a lot harder to find postcards now in general than when I did postcrossing over a decade ago. I live in a rural area and it’s tricky to find any postcards - even tourist/view cards. I buy online mostly. Occasionally find at op shops or cafes.

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Majority of the cards I come across now are mostly touristic, from a national park, museum, or an airport. Many years ago it was easy to find a variety of fun cards, from the unusual, black and white, weird, or somewhat comical. Now these types of cards I find difficult to find. Either I don’t know where to look online or am not looking at the right corner or book store. Every now and then I can find something unique at a travel stop that is outside the typical tourist card, but they are becoming more of a challenge to find.

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We do only have touristic and view cards that represent the country including flowers (like flowers of Sri Lanka), historical places, unesco, wild animals (mostly elephants), beachea around the country, lighthouses etc.
We don’t have any other general cards that do not represent the country like what you listed.

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As the culture of sending postcards has pretty much died since the early 2000s there aren’t many type of postcards sold in bookstore and souvenir centre of touristic places. Official cards are issued by Indonesian post but there aren’t many (like maybe 1 serie a year)

But in general Indonesian postcards are as follow :

  • Traditional dances and cultures
  • Traditional garments (Batik / Kain tenun)
  • Tourist attractions (museum, old temples & building, nature)
  • Endemic flora and fauna
  • Few old photos or paintings from Dutch colonial time to present time

And ofc there’s no postcard about :

  • LGBT themed
  • Erotic/nudism (unless it’s from an anciet Hindu or Buddhist relics in old temples)
  • Pretty sure the communism symbol is banned so this a no too
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It is possible for anybody to order postcards in the net shops.

@kotona
personally i do not like to buy cards online.

i rarely buy cards online.

i enjoy looking around for cards everywhere i go.

It kind of depends, if I order online I can find most things.

One type of postcard that I can’t order on the sites that I usually order from are Tausendschön cards. I could technically order them somewhere else, but they’re really expensive. If we’re going off of postcards I can buy in shops however…

In my city, it’s very hard to find single view tourist postcards, which are generally the types of postcard from ‘your city’ that people like. Mostly they have multi view, which many people dislike. I have found some, but yeah…

I haven’t been able to find any single view (or multi view for that matter) postcards depicting my city online either, sadly enough.

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Agreed that online is certainly an option. I’ve actually gotten some really nice mixed lots of cards on ebay for a pretty good price.

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for example, i do not think people in Cuba and most African countries can afford to buy cards online.

i would consider the most commonly available cards in these countries are viewcards. and it would be terribly rude to mention of disliking of viewcards. i have seen lots of people mentioning that they dislike viewcards.

so in these countries, cards that are not available can be anything but viewcards.

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Not everyone has a credit card, or other method of online payment. Also even if you have that option, there are many reasons one might choose not to shop online.

I can’t really speak to what is or isn’t available in American stores in general, but in my rural community there is one store with four choices of cards, and the quality isn’t even good. People who like handmade get a nice drawing that matches their profile interests, and those who don’t just get the best I can do out of a small collection of store bought cards I keep on hand. I don’t have the option of shopping for a special card that fits someone’s profile.

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I think it’s lovely that the only war related cards you have are of peace monuments.

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I very rarely buy online, because I prefer seeing how the card is in person and it’s quality. The writing side is important to me too, how sturdy the card is etc.

Here the hardest to find are viewcards showing my city how it currently is. The ones that are sold are years, even tens of years old. Also hard to find are famous persons, nude cards, trains/transport of my country, national costume, food, athletes, sports stadiums. I am sure these are available somewhere, at least occassionally. But I never order card only to one person, so it’s not helping if these topics are in some online shop only :neutral_face:

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I came to write something similar to this. I find it ironic, though: never have I been in a country with so many postcards of every type everywhere… yet, I can’t really find nice view postcards from here. :sweat_smile:

It’s a pity since there are many beautiful places that would look nice in a postcard and that I would love to show people some time! Maybe I’ll have more luck finding them in the future. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I know you’ve mentioned “not much portraits of people”, but I think it could be added, as I’ve seen many people requesting in their profiles - royal family photos.
This is a very interesting topic!

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Only touristy cards here, with the occasional artistic cards showing local culture.

I don’t like to buy other types of cards online (and if I do, it’s for my collection and not to send). My reasoning is that I live in a country considered “rare” and I feel as if the recipient would be disappointed to get a card from a rare country but showing something unrelated to that country.

But that’s just my personal feelings.

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We only have viewcards and sometimes animals cards in tourist cities. It’s also possible to find art postcards at some museums. If I want something different, I have to buy on the internet or from other postcrossers.

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LGBTQ+ postcards do not exist here and are impossible to find. I notice on some profiles people are seeking them, but I would never be able to send it. I even consider creating (professionally print) some gay related cards myself. No other way to find them.

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Lots of variety here, small towns often lack tourist cards (when they aren’t a tourist destination). Some topics are harder to find of course. I love to seek for cards on my trips, but I love ordering online, too.

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