I find that Australia Post defaces stamps even when they have been carefully and clearly hand cancelled. Of course, Australia Post wants to discourage people from collecting used stamps as they make no money from this - they want you to buy mint stamps and never actually use them, pure profit for them!
The finger crossing worked! I just had one of my two cards to China registered in 39 days. Iām so happy! Hereās hoping the other card is not far behind.
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Do any of my fellow Aussies know what brand of card this is and/or where to buy it?
Thank you!
And have a great weekend!!
āFelt likeā minus 5.2 in the 'berra as I rocked up for parkrun this morning. Bring on the solstice!!! Was it colder at your place?
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Hm! Reverse image searching brings up nothing, itās really cute though. I did see a very similar clip-art image, but itās hard to tell which comes first with these sort of things - if perhaps the clip art creator saw it and used it as inspo.
Is there anything on the back, if you have it irl?
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I think itās cute too! I donāt have it here. I saw it in the PC gallery or a wall earlier today. Maybe Iāll go back and find it there and ask the sender if they remember where they bought it!
Thank you for reverse image searching it for me though! I donāt know how to do that!! But have heard of it before.
Itās pretty simple to do but doesnāt always have great result 
Works best for me on PC, I basically just click and drag the image into a āgoogle image searchā tab and it usually auto-searches the image for me 
But yeah, all it brought up was clip art which is a bit annoying! If you do ask the sender, let me know what they say? 
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Is the image search searching on the pixels of the image or the meta-data/name of the file? The pic I posted above is a cropped screen shot. Just wondering if that makes a difference or not?
And if I find the card I will absolutely let you know the details. 
Iām not actually sure! I think itās probably scanning the image pixel by pixel, as what it gave me was mostly things that looked similar in design if that makes sense?
For finding a similar I doubt a screenshot will make a difference, though - not sure what metadata it could pull from the original, I doubt it could find the designer from that which is a shame
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Itās an auspost prepaid. I donāt know how old it is, but I found it at a PO up here that had a huge selection of older cards.
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Yep. I got one at the Bourke St PO in Melb some time ago, but havenāt seen them in a while.
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Ooh! That makes sense, yet another reason I need to go out to the city to look for postcrossing materials
My local has slim pickings for postcards, even prepaidā¦ although I won big time yesterday! thereās a thrift store next door that had a BOX of postcards, 20c each!! Not all of them were the nicest but I got about 10 or so.
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Thanks for the info!
Where is the thrift store? I rarely see postcards in op shops but I do buy some older Australiana ones for myself, not to send, if I see them.
As helent says Bourke St is good, also Elizabeth St PO one can be good and even the one in Collins St which is inside and arcade building is worth a look. All certainly better than anything Iāve seen out this way. I usually just order cards and stamps on-line.
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Mm, noted! Now Iāve got a list to look at, yay
The thrift store is out in the eastern suburbs but itās a very short walk from my house so Iād rather not self-doxx >.>;
I will say, you might have better luck in the less commercial ones? Like, not Savers or even Salvos but the more random ones that you just stumble across.
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When did we start to be able to cut an object out of an existing photo and save it separatelyā¦on an iPhone (mine is a 12)?!
I accidentally just did this! This is the sort of thing I did in Photoshopā¦and it took me forever. And now I did it accidentally on my phone in seconds!
ETA: It looks like at least September last year! ā¦donāt mind meā¦obviously not a cutting-edge gal .
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I am reasonably sure that I have had that postcard in years gone by and I may still have some. I am unable to look at my stash currently as it is still all in storage during our house build.
I bought it at a tourist shop either in Victor Harbor or Goolwa. Neither shop exists anymore.
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I got some happy mail today from a new penpal of mine and it got opened by the ABF! I almost feel like Iām in trouble even though the note said they didnāt take anything 
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Thanks @Mundoo, Iāll keep an eye out for it when I shop about the place. I might get lucky one day.
@blazingstar Iāve had a couple of etsy packages opened in the last year. Two had the Border Force scrap of paper about checking. One did not. But I donāt think anything was missing from it. Iām not sure what theyāre looking for. All three times the goods were just a small handful of postcardsā¦about 6ā¦in an essentially flat envelope. Having been purchased through Etsy the GST had been added and collected. It seems like a lot of work for them. But maybe because itās paper products, itās setting off an organics sensor or something. I donāt know. I just know itās annoying when my pretty happy mail arrives all slashed up. Iām trying to only buy within Oz at present. Cheaper and supporting locals. But there are sadly very few Aussie postcard artists on Etsy!
Iām sorry for side-trackingā¦I know you said your mail was from penpals, not purchases. Can you see a pattern with what the envelopes held? Wads of paper or washi tape etc? Come to think of it, the security people at Alice Springs airport went through my large wad of postcards last year. They said that much paper all piled together shows up on their scanners as organic or something like thatā¦I donāt remember exactly what they said. But it caused them to search.
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Aaah, that sort of makes sense! Paper products, yep.
There was a washi tape sample and a postcard, so I can see how those + the letter would perhaps show up as organic.
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I agree with this, I find very few Vinnies or Lifelines or whatever have much for stationery, but Iāve had good luck recently at a couple local one-off op shops, including one that had a pristine copy of an older Aussie card I had on my faves wall for ages and never expected to see in real life (AU-190473). Turns out that design was an Avant cardā¦ oh boy do I wish those would come back!
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