I wonder… if there is some special shiny Postcardland where all our missing postcards go and live happily 
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I understand, maybe I will check if they are still active 
I have noticed that my expired postcards have dramatically increased during 2022. In 2021, I ended up with perhaps three expired postcards after sending a second card to all postcards that had expired. So far, in 2022, I now have 18 expired postcards and it’s only July, and I have sent second postcards to many of these addresses. I print the addresses, and put tape over them to make sure the addresses stay, so what can the problem be? What am I doing wrong? I have noticed that the postcrossers to whom I have sent many of these expired cards haven’t been active for more than a month. Are postcrossers dropping out of this program without notifying Postcrossing? Is anyone else experiencing this?
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Some thoughts after reading your post.
First, try PMing before sending a second card. If the first was never delivered, they might appreciate a second card. But maybe they just aren’t participating anymore, so you could save yourself some time and money.
Second, I don’t follow up expired cards because Postcrossing is supposed to be fun. Record keeping is, for me, frustrating and not fun.
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Not sure what the problem is. Could be a variety of issues. For me, once I mailed the card, I did my part. Now it’s up to the other person. There have been several occasions where Postcrossing automatically registered a card that was traveling to a member after that member closed their account. There are other short-timers who really don’t give a hoot.
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You probably aren’t doing anything wrong & you know you don’t have to send a 2nd card right?
There’s a lot going on in the world right now disrupting postal services:
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Any cards to Russia or Belarus may have expired if sent around the time the US stopped processing mail to both countries because of the invasion of Ukraine.
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Postcrossing has suspended giving out addresses to China because of the pandemic backlog
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Many, many countries postal services have been affected by the pandemic this year with many staff being off sick, air flights being significantly affected, there has also been a huge increase in extreme weather events due to climate change that has also affected mail delivery etc.
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A certain % of those cards may just be lost - that always happens, nothing we can do about it and
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Yes, you may have drawn more than normal numbers of folks who’ve stopped participating, been unable to participate etc.
And just for comparison, I’ve had 11 expired cards so far this year - 3 more coming shorty for a total of 14, mostly Russia & the US (I have this theory, that given staffing cuts etc, postcards are downgraded in USPS system in terms of delivery processing)
It might be worth checking with Admin about this, but I suspect, it’s all of the above factors. It’s frustrating to be sure, we all want our cards to arrive but I’ve come to realize that once I mail my cards, it’s out of my hands & I just have to let it go & pray the postal gods will look kindly on my cards.
Hang in there.
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I have had very few expired postcards sent from the UK since I joined in April 2021 (4 overall), but I recently sent some postcards in travel mode from US and Switzerland. The Swiss ones have arrived extremely quickly, but 4 of the US ones are taking ages and about to expire 
. Maybe it’s a problem with USPS? There’s certainly no issue with Royal Mail or Swiss Post…
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And more than ever high temperatures (35-47 Celsius degrees somewhere) with extensive forest fires in Europe make some troubles too. Many people have another things to worry about than some expired or non-registered postcards.
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Might be true. Normally in my area there is a two-day turnaround for local letters. But I mailed about 85 postcards for a non-Postcrossing social event on Monday and my test postard to myself that I included in the batch did not arrive today (Wednesday).
UPDATE: My test postcard arrived - it was postmarked the day AFTER I placed it in the mailbox before pickup time. As noted by @LC-Canada it’s probably staffing/shortage issues and my cards missed the truck to the out-of-state processing center where all the mail from my town goes. Disappointing!
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My longest-travelling cards have been within my own state lately. It’s hard to make sense of it all these days 
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I have a couple of ‘slow’ cards pending where it’s obvious that the recipient doesn’t register cards for a while after receiving them. It isn’t always a postal issue.
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Don’t know if it’s randomly happening to my cards, but in my experience cards to US take a long time and are among those which get lost quite often. Also to PC people who regularly register their cards.
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Every postcrosser experiences this regularly since the beginning of times (or at least as long as I’ve been here, almost 6 years). And yes a lot of it is due to people disappearing without a trace. The only thing to do is to accept it, or rather to not think about as it’s annoying. I don’t have any hope of any of my 9 expired ever arriving, most of them are to people who disappeared (and a couple of them to active people in very reliable countries so I think they’re truly lost). I never send a second card, I don’t think that’s how it should work but of course others might differ (the FAQs say you don’t have to and I tend to take those things pretty literally).
Wow, when I was in the UK (2016-2019 in postcrossing terms, longer in terms of my life) I always had up to 9-10 expired (well obviously not at the very beginning), even without wars, pandemics, fires and whatnot. Russia was a black hole of despair in terms of my postcards 
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I’m in the UK and I have 15 expired. I think it’s just the luck of the draw, as a lot of the people in that list haven’t logged on for months. @NatM
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Sure, but it’s also how much you send, I used to send 2-3 per week …(my total postcards sent is almost half yours, in almost twice the time - what I mean is, there are people with 50 expired but they send, I don’t know, 50 per week and their total is in the thousands, so it’s also volume).
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Oh, that sounds a bit aggravating!
I’ve seen users elsewhere who register their received postcards in batches, sometimes at intervals of 60 days or thereabouts. To be sure, it’s harder to understand in countries like Canada, where most of us have easy internet access. But, I have a neighbour in my apartment building who is living on a limited income, and she goes to the local library several times a week to use the computers there.
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I feel a bit foolish now, after reading all these wonderfully wise responses to my lament about my expired cards. So much is happening globally … global warming, weather, wars, Covid … that I’m surprised any of my cards get delivered, and I am thankful for those that are delivered. I am grateful to Postcrossing for creating a way for me to reach others, and I am grateful to the postal workers for keeping folks connected. It’s not easy, is it?
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Reminder that batch registration is not always someone being lazy. Some people may not be able to collect their mail on a daily basis for a variety of reasons.
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I’ve looked through my old cards and found this
So much time had passed and only know I realised that this postcard from the Netherlands has no stamps! And what more it was overlooked by the NL post. The sender might have forgotten to put one due to the picture which looked like a stamp. Sometimes I wonder how much of the expired cards are like this.
Or there is another way to pay which I don’t know about?
I’ve felt like that since the 90s, well I guess wars and stuff existed even then, but what I mean is, since my childhood/teen years I felt mail is such a fickle thing and so much can go wrong, it really is not surprising that things get lost. So I’m always surprised when people think it’s so exceptional that mail gets lost.
Now postcrossers that abandon the hobby without registering, that’s another story but there is literally no solution. (Yes, sometimes they might have no choice because something bad happened, but I think that’s not the majority, or so I hope).
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