I’m trying a new method atm. Yesterday, I finally had one more sent than received and went inactive after a few hours. My address has most likely been given out already, so now I’ll remain inactive till I have more sent than received again. This way I hope to avoid my address going out multiple times, even though there are still plenty of cards travelling to me. Because if another of my cards gets registered before I receive any myself, my address is usually given out again, even though there’s already more cards travelling to me than I’ve sent out.
2 Likes
Did you by any chance have many cards travelling at that time?
Yes, but not by chance - I always have many cards travelling, that’s not out of the ordinary. I just hope I won’t forget how registering is done now in the next few weeks when I’ll take a “break” 
For me, a few hours is too long. I try to stay active for only a minute or so at a time. Even so I have already received 9 cards from 5th January. I think that my maximum is 17 received for being due one card.
3 Likes
I was asking because of how the algorithm seems to work currently. It gives your address not just for the postcards that have already been registered but also for those that are still travelling. It gives your address for all those cards at once instead of once every time a postcard is registered. So if you have many cards travelling, it causes these mini floods once in a while 
2 Likes
Why do I have 64 sent and 65 received postcards. Shouldn’t I have more sent than received cards?
1 Like
@LMcLerran, there is a lot of discussion in the above thread that may be helpful but if you take a look at the FAQs here, it says:
Why have I received more postcards than I have sent?
The algorithm for selecting addresses is complex and there are instances when your address will be selected a bit more often than you expect. Count it as an early bonus — your sent/received numbers will even out in the long run.
2 Likes
Thank you for the quick response!
My situation is the opposite, although I’m quite new so I’m not sure if this is normal. I have sent 6 postcards (and have another 6 traveling) and I’ve only received 2 so far.
The postal service in Japan works quite well, so I’m hopeful that I’ll receive a few more cards next week 
7 Likes
Your first two postcards were registered on 3rd April, so only two weeks ago and the rest even later. There are definitely postcards already on the way to you but they do take time. It can easily take a month for a postcard to arrive, sometimes even more.
3 Likes
Of course, I understand that it can take time for postcards to arrive 
Six of my sent cards have already made it, and I’ve also received some from swaps 
It’s possible that the others are coming from countries with longer mail delivery times.
1 Like
A few days ago I received a postcard from America that had traveled for 281 days (I admit - spent that time behind the sorting machine while the cleaner pulled it out 
) So it happens.
5 Likes
This happened to me too. I have recieved 16 but only sent 12 i think this because theres a chance that people randomly getto send to you but Idk really.
I have currently received 5 more cards than I have sent. I have now received 14 postcards where my address was drawn on 16 April - but only 2 of the ones I sent were registered on that day… somehow it takes a bit of the fun out of Postcrossing when you’re inundated with postcards even though your own have not yet been registered. I was always happy when one I sent arrived because I knew that someone somewhere would now draw my address - now I know that I get more than I send anyway 
I just wanted to share something fun that recently happened to me - and maybe to more people too!
I recently drew and sent a batch of official postcards that took forever to reach to destination. Like, I usually space my sendings so they arrive little by little to their people and so I get a more or less continuous flow of cards, but in this particular batch, all cards took more than two weeks from the last card I sent - meaning that the last card of the batch arrived in two weeks (normal) but all the other cards that I had sent before took so much longer that the last card sent was actually the first to arrive to destination!
That meant that my address was off the system for more than a month. However, when one of my postcards arrived and my address was again included in the game (circa 9th April) the system must have gotten a bit crazy, because I ended up receiving FIVE different postcards from different parts of the world, all of them drawn that day! 
The system must have gotten really confused with my “unexplainable disappearance”, because it seems to me that it rushed to give my address to a lot of people in order to make up for the lack of cards
Fortunately, they arrived little by little so my Receives did not massively mismatch my Sents, but I wonder if there’s still a postcard with that same date travelling around and about to reach. Have you experienced something like that before?
1 Like
@MehndiLover - It’s funny you should mention this because I am new to Postcrossing and have noticed that I am receiving more cards than I am sending. 
This is lovely because even though I am (im)patiently waiting for postcards to arrive at their destinations, it’s like the algorithm has taken pity on me and is still allowing my address to be picked up by others! 
I have had two slots open up now - 1 x expired and 1 x received - so I will be able to send out postcards again to ‘even things out’ regarding my sent vs received postcards.
But I did wonder if the algorithm has a built-in bias towards slightly more receiving than sending? If so, brilliant - thank you @paulo and @meiadeleite 
- because that’s a genius way of building in a nice ‘surprise receipt’ of postcards for those of us that thought we had to wait for receipts or expires to have our address accessed again! 
It can be pretty annoying, too 
, if you have received more cards than you sent and you feel like you have to catch up. But I’m happy that there are people who enjoy it this way
As far as I have observed it, the algorithm is triggered when your sent amount gets bigger than your received amount and it gives your address out at least the amount of cards of the difference + the cards that are currently on your traveling list (without expired I guess and probably - the cards that are already traveling to you). But please enjoy your own observations
4 Likes
Ok, I’ve been doing Postcrossing for a good many years and this recently happened to me after a hiatus of at least several months. Over a period of a couple of weeks I received many more cards than would make sense considering those recently registered by others. Definitely an imbalance. I thought maybe my name was being put in after ancient cards had expired, or their owners’ account closed. Not sure. Certainly a nice surprise though!
Yeah, I also found it a bit annoying that I had to catch up with my sent cards I’m definitely grateful for the amount of cards I’ve been receiving lately, but it’s a bit frustrating to be sending cards little by little so I can get a slow flow of cards myself… only to suddenly receive four or five cards all at the same time because the system has gone a bit bonkers
3 Likes