Could I just block certain countries from generating addresses?

I’m tired of sending things too far away for now when I don’t have but so many slots. Thanks

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No. The whole point of Postcrossing is you get a random address, no choice. Otherwise, everybody would block the most common countries and people who are due postcards would not get them…

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One solution is to activate “send within my own country” option.
Your card should be delivered faster and you can get more slot.

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I did a bunch of direct swaps in the beginning when I had so few slots, but learning patience is one of the things that’s part of Postcrossing.

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No, see here. In addition to “sending within my own country” you can also check the option to send to repeated countries, I guess you’ll get a lot of addresses in Germany (cards usually get there fast) and US (even faster for you), but also maybe Russia, which may defeat the purpose - still, it’s an option.

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Funnily, when I first joined I used “repeated countries” to get more Russia in order to slow me down, as I didn’t want to spend too much money so I needed to be “forced” not to send more :rofl:

@PleiadianDragon actually, if you have “send to own country” and “repeated countries”, since you are in the USA you should get a lot of USA nowadays. I switched it off because I was getting so much USA and with the current postal issues there, too many cards were getting lost.

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Agreed, the “send to own country” is probably the best option for faster deliveries and cheaper postage. At least when you live in big Postcrossing country. For me it is not doing much :upside_down_face:

It would be really unfair if it was possible to block countries. It feels hard first but along the time you just learn to wait and soon you do not even think about long delivery times.

However, there are hope for getting your slots filled with different countries! I have noticed along the years that the most sending countries seems to indeed change. When I first started Finland was The Postcrossing Country. Nowadays it is bit rare to get card from Finland. The Netherlands used to be like Germany is now. Taiwan was very big for a while, and Poland was also sending cards like a crazy. So the most common countries to get from / send to cards do change over the time.

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Yeah, you just have to be patient mostly. Also, maintain your Max Allowed Traveling at its max religiously (don’t go to sleep tonight until you have written out all the cards necessary to reach your current max!).

The algo to generate addresses is not purely random. Probably only Paulo knows for sure, but I can tell you, from my own experience after two full years here, that no matter how hard I tried (including keeping at the max allowed traveling at all times), I could not break above 20+ sent per month because I would get no USA addresses for long stretches of time but always lots of “postal black hole” countries where you pretty much had to say, as soon as you saw the address, “Oh, well. See you in 61 Days!”.

BUT, as soon as covid hit badly last March 2020, (and depressed Postcrossing worldwide), I started getting a good amount of USA addresses as never before. I have had the “send to my own country” checked almost from the beginning. With those USA addresses, I was finally able to break above 30+ for the last six months and now feel a lot better at 20 Max Allowed Traveling because that overcomes delays to “challenged” destinations. It’s almost as though Postcrossing had seen that I had “paid my dues” and now “rewarded” me with a few more USA addresses to help my monthly Sent count along.

Anybody else had this kind of experience?

When I reach 25 or so Max Allowed Traveling, I may shut off “send to my own country” to help out with the rest of the world because I think at that level (25+) I can still continue to increase my Sent count a little each month regardless of international postal conditions.

Happy Postcrossing!

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@PleiadianDragon I am also new to PC and did a lot of exchange by participating in various tags in the forum when I reached the limit of 5 cards on the official PC site. That‘s fun, too, and within a month I got in total about 25 cards.

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One option is to do direct swaps or tags.

I put my account as inactive to official Postcrossing cards because I do get Russia and Germany. A lot. I love the idea of sending to other places. Maybe when tendencies change, and there maybe a new country that becomes the newest Postcrossing master. Maybe I will send official cards again.

With direct swaps and tags, you can choose where you send. It’s all at your own risk and Postcrossing is not involved.

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Nope. Germany exclusively.
If I take “repeated countries” out, I will get US addresses repeatedly nevertheless (I usually have between 20-25 cards travelling).

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Thanks. I play many of those games!

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Russia was my dominant Repeated County. Now it’s USA & Germany.
Because, once the postcard leaves me, it’s out of my control and I’ve got other things to do, I don’t follow very well.

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Hi, I’m still newish to post crossing but have become very frustrated that every card I send to a specific county expires. Is there a way to exclude sending to a specific country?

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No. You can untick the repeated countries box that you have ticked in your settings. That should help some. It would not be fair for anyone if we could all pick a country to exclude.

I’ve just looked at your sent cards and there seems to be a lot of variety there?

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Due to the pandemics many cards travel much longer than they did before.
I’ve sent quite a number of cards during the previous months and so far most of them arrived within 60 days. Those that didn’t arrived shortly after. The only one of my traveling cards that’s close to being deleted from the system because it nearly travelled a year now is a domestic one to Germany - and I also sent 2 resend cards. :thinking:

No need to worry about expired cards. Postcrossing is a lot about learning to be patient.
If you’d like to send and receive more cards and chose the country you send to, you’ve got a huge variety of possibilities here in the forum. Welcome to our community, @therejohn!

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Welcome at the forum @therejohn
I have merged your question with this topic because they have the same theme.

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The solution to this is doing direct swaps then you can choose who you swap with. There’s no control though if people really send but most of my swaps are fair.

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Curiously, that’s exactly my case !

Germany is the front runner by far. Then Russia. Only one from the USA and lately … Australia.

No problems whatsoever with far away destinations, but they will clearly take longer to arrive, and that kinda slows generating new addresses.

Is there a way to sort countries in order to try direct swaps? :thinking:
Just tried the search option but I didn’t see a place to specifically do that