How long is average postcrosser's lifetime?


Here is mine. The first hiatus in 2013-2015 is because I started seasonal working and I was moving around Finland every now and then. In 2016-2017 I was studying and saving money and spent 4 months in New Zealand. And since November 2019 I’ve been living in a house without mailbox.

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Here’s mine. 2014 was a complicated, awful year, and then I kind of forgot until the pandemic started. I’m glad I came back on time to see the new forum!

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I started my advanced studies in 2018 and wrote the bachelor’s thesis in 2019. So no time for anything but uni. :smiley:
Since last March, I suddenly had a lot of time due to Covid and finally rediscovered my love for postcards in May. Since I have so much more time and money on my hands now, my monthly sent/received increased dramatically. :flushed:

You can also clearly see that I moved in 2014 and 2016. :smiley:

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I’ve been here since 2011 and looking at my graph I see several breaks which correspond to : moves from one home to another in the same state, a nervous breakdown, my mother’s death, being extremely busy at work, a very unexpected and unwanted promotion at work, a cross-country move, a divorce, and a few extended periods of traveling, among probably other less significant things. It seems breaks, even long ones, are quite normal. I wouldn’t assume that anyone had truly left unless account is actually deactivated.

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I am with Postcrossing exactly 100 days today. My curve seems to go down in March, I have some long distance cards travelling and cannot really do much at the moment but having fun with tags, swaps, RR in the forum which fills my mailbox almost daily with 2 or even more postcards :hugs:

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I’ve been a Postcrosser since 2006 but have taken a few long breaks, mostly because I couldn’t afford to keep up with it.

I always come back, and am just as delighted as I was the first time around.

The biggest change for me is not sending and receiving as many cards to/from Finland anymore! Now I get very excited when I draw a Finnish address or receive a card from there. :grin:

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So far, my interest and enthusiasm for postcrossing has only been growing. And luckily, I have had nothing major going on in my private life that would force me to take a break. I even had to “cap” my enthusiasm off at 20 cards per month because it was going a little bit overboard regarding costs of cards, washi tape and stamps!

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I have started with Postcrossing in March 2009 as a student and remained very active until my graduation in September 2013. Later I fell into financial insecurity and with the exception of some minor periods never returned into official Postcrossing (to my decision also contributed disappointment with some of cards that I have been receiving).

However, if there would be a curve for Forum activity, it would be completely opposite. With the decline of interest into official cards, I became much more interested in various TAGs, RRs, private swaps and offers. I got a chance to get places and cards that I liked, specify my requests in offer RRs and build myself a list of places that I would like to have … and on Forum these places CAN BE found.

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It seems like i lost interest for a couple of years (travelling, thesis, voluntarism), moved and started a new job in 2016 and apparently fell in love a couple of times and forgot about the rest! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:
But Covid, better financial situation and a clearance where i found my stash, brought me where I am now! And I love it!

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I’m not sure when I signed up, but my lifetime will be 12 cards. I was very excited to sign up and start sending post cards, I bought 40-50, new and vintage. A bunch of stamps, domestic and international. But I got a somewhat gruff response to one of my first cards because I forgot the postcrossing number and yeah, just not interested and seems like people have all these crazy lists on their profiles. So, I got my last card today (took 5 months to make it from russia) to even me out at 12 sent and 12 received and I’m out.

I stumbled on this topic today, and I have to say, it makes me happy to see all your graphs with big gaps on them. That might sound strange, but to me, it speaks to Postcrossing being a place where you’re welcomed back to when you have the time or the eagerness to send a postcard — and not a nagging website where we want to keep you engaged and active at all costs. :sweat_smile:

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This is mine. I’ve had some periods where other things in life were more important than thinking about postcards.

But to be honest I don’t believe that these stats give a true picture. Not sending / registering for a long time doesn’t mean someone could be called a “ghostcrosser” or some like that. Maybe one is very active in the forum, who knows?

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I joined 2 years ago. Like many people here, I have a pretty bumpy graph. Real life, you know? But I’ve never thought of myself as inactive at any point in those 2 years… just “less active than usual”. And while I haven’t worked hard to maximize my allotment as I could have done, that’s been partly due to busy-ness, partly because it can get expensive (it costs $2.71 a pop to send an international postcard). So, I still have only 11 slots after 2 years of activity.

But all that said, I love Postcrossing and can’t imagine ever stopping! At most, I’ll slow down my activity every now and then. Right now western Canada’s postal services are backlogged due to the knock-on effects of disastrous flooding and blockage of key transportation routes. So, I’m going to hold off on sending out more postcards until things start moving again.

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Breaks seem to be normal, so I am unnormal:


I am member for 8 years now and I took no break so far.

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Since I started I have being active at the postcards world, but having to jungle between official site, forum, facebook, private penpals…this is my graphic

What I mean is…when my graphic is down at the Postcrossing site is because it’s high at some other part :sweat_smile: I’m postcard-addicted :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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Like RalfH, I am apparently not a normal postcrosser either. I have actually always been active for more than 9 years.
Sometimes I write less, sometimes more, in between I always set myself to inactive and just write, then I get lots of cards again because I’m back on “active”.
In the last few years, I have written few to no cards in October and November, only to save slots and stamps to start the card marathon for “Postcards for good cause” in December. And than, most of the time, I don’t really feel like writing in January.
But even in the inactive months I still receive cards and and sent cards are registered.
So there’s pretty much no real break.

I’m always here :joy:

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Same with me - once I got started, I never really stopped :slight_smile:

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My first mini break was when I had my first baby :baby:t2: in 2011. Then the long stretch of inactivity was the worst years of my life(from 2017-2020): 2 category 5 hurricanes :cyclone:2 weeks apart: which left me with lots of months without water :droplet: :non-potable_water:, electricity :no_entry_sign::zap: , postal service :mailbox_with_no_mail: :envelope_with_arrow: and especially internet :no_mobile_phones::calling:, (got it back after 7 months). Then I got my 2nd baby :baby:t2:in 2018. Mayor craniotomy :brain: in 2019. A series of earthquakes :hotsprings:, power outages in 2020 and finally covid hit hard in 2021-2022. :syringe:. But I made it and I’m back stronger than ever!!! :sun_with_face::woman_shrugging:t2:

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Quite a long break for me, with some dipping back in in the middle, but I really missed Postcrossing so here i am again :smiley:

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I think I stopped because postcards took so slow to arrive, that I even forgot I was postcrossing until they arrived. I receive postcards in about two weeks, but when I send out it takes months to arrive so eventually it is too frustrating (and gets expensive to resend) so it’s not fun at all anymore.

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