For U.K. postcrossers, I hope this isn’t true

[MoominMog]

And Philatelink sells his stamps at below face value so you’ll be saving money on the ever expensive £2.20 a time postcard!

[Florallle]

Nice to have you here. I agree about Philatelink - they’re a good and reliable company. But as the others have said, your only obligation is to send a postcard with enough postage on. You don’t have to provide anything else.

(Btw, have you found your way to the British Isles section of the forum yet?)

[Johnk60]

I think that is definitely rude. As a matter of fact I find the term “Please use nice stamps” not so nice, passive-aggresive.

[xxxxyyyyzzzz]

Welcome to the forum and to Postcrossing.
A commemorative stamp is a bonus, not a requirement, so just send what you can get. My village postoffice has nothing except the standard barcoded ones.

I do find, though, that 2 x first class barcoded take a similar amount of space as 2 x first class commemorative, and generally don’t encroach too much beyond the address section of the card. So if you do catch the bug, you could look for the smaller, squarer, commemoratives on the Royal Mail website. I wouldn’t recommend the £2.20 ones though, as you could get stuck with them when the price goes up, and have to source the smaller values to add on.

Above all though, have fun with Postcrossing and enjoy yourself. The number of picky profiles is massively outweighed by the rest, and some of the picky appearing ones are probably the fault of translation apps.

[xiaodongzhi]

Actually I prefer receiving the queen’s head’s stamp because I am afraid that they will no longer exists
Probably we can have a swap or something
Sometimes it’s really difficult to fulfill all their requirements, it’s not necessary at all

[GladysEm]

Thank you to everybody who has commented and made good recommendations. You have all been very supportive. I have asked our postmistress to sort me some low value combination stamps. Some lucky person will get a card full one day! Happy postcrossing x

[xxxxyyyyzzzz]

Hi @GladysEm

I’m attaching a link to a thread in the British Isles section where we discuss stamps and what’s going on at the Post Office. I always learn something new there , and I thought you might find it helpful:

[Stamps] UK stamps, prices, Royal Mail & Post Office matters

My guess is that ‘Europe’ is any country for which sea-mail is / was not really an option. I don’t imagine that much genuinely goes by sea nowadays, but when I worked in Asia many years ago, if it wasn’t strictly labelled as airmail it definitely went by sea (to India and then overland). With the exception of the hop across the channel I’m not sure that there is a viable sea route to the places than come under the more expensive price band.

[marit_la]

I’m just wondering; this this barcode, would it be possible for the sender of a letter (or postcard) to track the sent item?