I have to admit I am not good at writing thank you messages. There are often cards that I am so happy about to receive but I struggle to find the propper words to thank someone. Then I only write: Thank you for your card. I am so happy I found it in my mailbox today. I guess this sounds generic but I really struggle to express my thanks properly.
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You can collect cards, but this issue keeps coming up because people DEMAND cards for their collections & nothing else & are often quite grumpy about people not fulfilling their demands. Itâs a small but vocal minority on Postcrossing.
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Iâm fairly new to postcrossing, but Iâm not looking through anyoneâs received list to sure they donât have duplicates. I thought postcrossing was about connecting and learning about other people and places. If youâre here for collecting postcards maybe go to the forums and do swaps?
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Iâm glad I havenât gotten any grumpy people. My biggest request is that someone writes about themselves or their location or animals - just write something please. I admit Iâm disappointed when I get a card that just says happy postcrossing, but I try not to be grumpy, I just say thank you for the card.
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You probably like getting a hurray message from me! I probably write too much back. 
. I comment on the written part of the card, on the card, on the stamps if they are special, and if itâs from someplace Iâve been or want to go to I might ask a question or make a comment about the locale. . I sometimes wonder if people hate my long messages
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I know exactly what youâre talking about. Your feelings are very normal to me.
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I will just participate as I want, but I suggest you dial back the self appointed gate keeping:
âAnd a reminder to collectors, that Postcrossing is not about collectingâ
Just do your own thing and let others do theirs; in the end we will all have an enjoyable experience
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Just amplifying what Postcrossing subscribes to & we wouldnât need to keep having this discussion if some collectors didnât keep putting people, especially new people, off with their demands.
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How is that âself appointedâ?
Of course there are collectors, but Postcrossing is not for that/them, which still doesnât mean collectors couldnât join. (The text there says: âthe goal of this project is not for collectors to complete their collectionsâ )
Like a cafeteria is not meant for studying, but you still can study there, but you canât demand quiet surrounding and empty table for your studying material.
No one is going to come to anyoneâs home and see what they do with their postcards.
But collectors also have agreed that they can get any postcard, how the sender chooses to write it etc.
So collectors like: I ONLY collect cards about A, no stickers, etc.
This is not what Postcrossing is for.
But: âI collect cards about A but also like x, y and z and will be happy to get card what card you choose.â Sounds like not se serious collector, but can be.
(I didnât read your profile and am not talking about you but just in general.)
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Someone I sent to recently asked that we peruse their collection to avoid duplicates â theyâve received over 20,000 cards! I noped right out of that and sent a card I bought from an artist at a street market. No guarantee this person hasnât received it before, but I guess itâs less likely. But it just smacks of a lack of awareness!
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I wonder if they are able to keep track themselves⌠I donât believe it is humanly possible to remember so many.
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After all these years with postcrossing I recently got a postcrosser suggesting I look at their âreceivedâ postcards to avoid duplicates and this postcrosser had received thousands of postcards. I didnât know how to feel about this. I actually started looking at the âreceivedâ postcards and did this for at least 3 minutes. It may not sound long but I got through only 4 pages. Then I realized this is going to take awhile. So I stopped and picked something I liked and hopefully the person didnât have. My time was limited as I had an appointment to get to. I even wrote that on the postcard. I was kinda shocked by the request but it is what it is. Canât change people.
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I recently had one who suggested to look the cards to avoid duplicates. Over 10k cards. Well first i looked up all the âfrom Finlandâ since i was going to send tourist card. But that just because i enjoy looking throught the galleries, sent, received, favourites - i always check the galleries, - fun for me! But i donât assume that others will check mine, all go through thousands of my favorites to see if they have a card from there to send. I just love collecting beautiful cards to my fav. Wall. Tiny side hobby 
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Though I donât have 20,000 but around 10,000 I can say (for me): No! It was easy until, letâs say 5,000, but thenâŚ
I came across cards I wanted to have so badly that I thought I really have them but I donât. Or I got cards long before when I wasnât interested in that typical kind but after years I suddenly liked them but didnât remember I received them.
Therefore I really donât care about duplicates and donât expect people to browse my collections.
The only exception is for specific RR and if itâs a very small collection - but even then I donât tell if itâs a duplicate - thereâs still a different text
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I donât know if, as a relatively new Postcrosser who has only sent out 3 postcards so far, I am entitled to comment on this topic, but I will try to give my two cents regarding various points raised in this thread after reading some of the posts.
First of all, I have nothing against collectors without being a postcard collector myself, period. (There is no âBUTâ to follow 
)
I got that the primary purpose of postcrossing is not collecting, but connecting. Nevertheless, I donât think the two are mutually exclusive or necessarily sit at opposite ends. Rather, I think one complements another to make this activity all the more enjoyable. Unless one is of the type of person who throws away all his/her postcards after receiving them, there is a collecting aspect to postcrossing. We appear to be âquarrellingâ because some members talk more from the perspective of collectors, while others from that of connectors (is this an actual word in English? 
). Fair enough, we are all different humans having different opinions.
Then about pleasing people. I am the type of person dedicated to public service so naturally I like to please people. People in my surrounding often describe me as âgenerousâ because I would go âover and beyondâ to accomodate them in their preferred way. However, my motivation is purely self-centered (not in the pejorative sense of the word); the starting point is MYSELF â I do so because itâs immensely gratifying to me to brighten someoneâs day with a little something. Othersâ happiness makes me happy. So I would say if you have any qualm after reading someoneâs profile that seems demanding, if this activity ceases to please yourself, you need not force yourself into pleasing that person.
Lately, because I am running the Stamp Out War: Support Ukraine project, everyday I skim through Postcrossingâs database to select 5-6 members who are mostly likely to respond favourably to my invitation to join this global initiative (note that unlike the Forumâs message system that has no visible limitation, Postcrossingâs message system sets an upper limit to the number of messages I can send out per day). This means that I read a lot of profiles everyday in order to personalise the invitation, and by so doing come across all kinds of different people with different wishes (which some may count as demands). I am not in the habbit of judging people based on a small facade they chose to reveal to the community, so I donât get any particular âoffenseâ by some of the things people include in their profiles.
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I know you are talking about people in general, and indeed, in most thinkable cases itâs not really humanly possible, but I should like to point out to the existence of a very small percentage of possessors of eidetic memory, which in the visual context, is often called photgraphic memory. They would be capable of keeping track of every postcard they received â and they are still human!
Another type of people who I think can nearly behave like a possessor of eidetic memory is a (more or less pathalogical) hoarder in the medical sense of the word. As an OCD patient who happens to be equipped with very good memory for certain types of information (which is so good that some of my friends consider it eidetic, but I know itâs not), I am actually a hoarder of information. This means I constantly (obsessively) double check information I have known, thereby retain these pieces of information longer than what an ordinary person is capable of. One exemple is that I have very good memory for numbers. To start with, I can remember virtually all my classmatesâ birthday or test result by seeing/hearing/knowing it only once. Then these pieces of information would come to my mind all the time and by virtue of repetitive exposure, I can remember them for a long time. In the context of postcard collecting, such âgifted (or cursed)â person would be constantly looking through or mentally recalling all of his/her received cards.
Just a bit of popularisation about those extremely unusual people. I am not disagreeing your general comment 
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I bet they still get duplicates, but funny thing is, do they really think everyone does this?
(I too like looking others collections, but sometimes Flickr does that it uploads the pictures in different speed. And some can be huge, and others tiny. I donât know if the âfaultâ is how those are scanned there, or my connection, but still thatâs not something I will wait if Iâm in a writing mood, and not waiting mood )
Here my two latest from Australia
There was no way to avoid this!
Think if they had gone through all my cards, and then same card appears
I really donât mind getting same card, these especially I love both 
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Oh my⌠I liked every card I received and hope to receiveâŚjust a happy and nice card in the mail is so much funâ:grinning:
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Iâm not looking through your received cards, Iâm just not. Looking at cards received from the US, where I am from, or from Germany (!) - nope, no way.
I used to do it when I lived in Turkey because there were not many cards to look at, but thatâs the only time.
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I like postcards overall. I like looking at them in shops, on membersâ walls, and sometimes even look at the gallery on the main page just to see what cards are being sent.
After reading a profile, I choose the received from US option and look through a few pages. I spend perhaps 5 minutes, so its not a huge burden on my time. Personally I enjoy seeing the cards the member has received from my country; some are familiar, but many are new to me from places I have never lived or visited. Occassionally I see the member already has received the card I selected, so I choose another. For me its an easy and simple process, doesnt take much time, and I think it helps me choose a card the recipient will enjoy seeing in their mailbox.
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