My wife and I are getting no variety of countries at the moment. Of our fifty most recent travelling cards, forty eight are going to either Germany or the USA. We have not selected “repeated countries “. Not that we mind, at least our cards are moving reasonably quickly.
That will open the edit page and at the bottom of the page you will see Preferences, there you can select or not select the box for Repeated Countries. Be sure to hit the Save Changes button when you’re done
You have to check an option (see above, same place as “repeated countries”) to send to your own country. So maybe you don’t have tha on Or maybe it’s just a coincidence.
As for the variety, if you don’t have “repeated countries” (see above again) then you should get more variety.
As for me, I send too little to see trends. I have 6 travelling now and I send like 2-3 per week. I haven’t seen any changes, even the non-DE and non-US I have at the moment are going to typical places like Finland and China. I can’t send to Russia so that was a big game-changer for me, or anyone that can’t send there since last year.
(I sent one to RU while I was in Italy and it was registered in a decent amount of time).
@madbee Hi Madeline. Welcome to Postcrossing! You can look at the screenshots I have shared here, it will show you where you can find the option to select “send and receive within my own country”.
If I remember correctly, for new members, it defaults to not selected for cards within their own country.
I was JUST coming here to ask the same questions. I just requested 25 addresses to send to and the pattern is as such: USA, Germany, USA, Germany…It’s LITERALLY like that for ALL THE CARDS, it’s just alternates between the two countries. I found that to be so strange. I’m happy to send and receive to any country, it’s still just as fun, again, I just found it weird.
Wished I had that, too, but I am flooded wth addresses from Russia and the USA, nowadays China as well. I had 38 cards travelling and 11 go to Russia, 10 to the USA and 6 to China which makes about two thirds of all the cards. The rest is the usual Finland, Belarus, Taiwan etc. There are people from more than 200 states members of PC. After nearly 4 years I am at 71 and I haven’t seen any new country for weeks.
This morning my card to someone in Malaysia arrived. It was my 1500th sent card and so I could generate two addresses: And what did I get? Russia and USA. Starting to lose interest in PC.
That’s a shame. I try to remind myself that each of those addresses are different individuals, in different parts of those frequently-seen countries, with different interests and topics we may connect on. It’s no individual’s fault they happen to live in a popular country, but everyone has their own story.
Actually, that’s the norm, especially if you have repeated countries on (see above or search the forum/FAQs). The opening question was due to surprise about getting more variety.
Since my last post, I only got USA and Germany (I can’t send to Russia). I don’t mind. Sometimes I switch off repeated countries but it doesn’t change a lot. I send to people, not to countries, though of course variety is nice but not a huge thing for me.
I noticed some changes in the addresses too! I didn’t receive any Russian address, but I got an address to Austria, Japan, South Korea. There are more Netherlands. Something is changing…
This is a really good point. And many countries also have unreliable post systems too. Or you have countries where there are people registered but not participating at all for all these reasons: high cost, unreliable post, only accessible in major cities, etc. I was living in Guatemala this last year and I was consistently able to receive cards but not able to send because for whatever reason the Guatemalan post has suspended all outgoing international mail.