I know this will be a discrimination, but.
The one thing that’s not mentioned and that I was thinking about that postcrossers in the frequent countries should automatically have the button “send to your own country” permanently ticked. Then they would help all the other participants to have more variety. I don’t have any figures of course of how many participants of these most frequent countries have the button on, and longer than just for 2 weeks in December.
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While I undestand your point of view, I think the existance of the “non repeated” button is still necessary, specially for newbies.
Once you’ve received 1k postcards from many countries, you’ve sent also to many countries, and you’ve sent to the same country countless of times, the repeating feature becomes less important. It is easy to care less about where you send and more about Who if you have been around for long and have already sent to a 1000 addresses.
But for people that are starting, and for whom postcrossing is a way of traveling through postcards, it can be pretty unmotivating if all your precious, scarce slots go to the same country.
While every address is different, it is not the same if I’m starting postcrossing and my map looks like this:
Postcard 1 Postcard 2 Postcard 3
Than if it looks like this:
Postcard 1 
Postcard 2 
Postcard 3.
Germany, Russia and the USA are very common countries, but for a newbie, those are three new countries, instead of one.
It is quite motivating and that is important because we all know that the first weeks of postcrossing are the worst. You finish sending your maximum of 5 postcards quite easily (even if you try to hold) and it takes time for your first Received postcard to arrive. It is easy to loose interest.
And, yes, “there’s the forum to send more”, but the forum takes some time to warm up and get a hold of how it works and you have to start intereacting (with limited actions) until you can write, answer, start a post, etc.
And not everyone likes the forum and the non-oficial PC and that’s fair.
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Most of the time I have yes for “own country” (it’s cheaper and faster 
) and yes for “repeated countries” (it’s always another person you send to or receive from 
).
But to be honest I deleted “repeated countries” in March when several countries stopped mail to Russia to avoid that I only get Russian addresses. Even without “repeated contries” I get about 5 German, 5 Russian and 5 US-Amerian addresses at the same time and I didn’t want to send only to these three countries over weeks. Especially as in 2021 Russia was the country with the most expired cards for me.
At the moment I have 22 travelling (5 RU, 5 US, 2 BY, all other are 1 per country) and when I draw new addresses maybe tomorrow, I guess I’ll get 5 German ones and maybe some from TW and NL and another one from RU, US and BY.
Maybe deactivate the button when you have more than 30 countries or more in your statistics page?
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But if we all send postcards to all countries again, everyone will have more variety again.
Also the people who start with Postcrossing.
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To be honest, I’m not thrilled with this idea. I occasionally use the repeated option but most of the time I don’t use it because I find it boring to get the same countries all the time. I have nothing against these countries, don’t misunderstand. Of course, people are always different but I prefer to have variety. If Postcorssing starts demanding that you have to use the repeated option, I think many users will stop this hobby. If the rule is only for one day, many don’t necessarily want to participate in it.
As an example.
On average, I send 1 postcard every week or 2 postcards every two weeks.
Started again in November 2021 after a long (years) break.
Between November 13, 2021 and September 18, 2022, I sent 48 postcards.
- Option ‘send cards to your own country’: on.
- Option ‘send to the same country repeatedly’: on.
48 postcards
- USA: 3
- Germany: 16
- Russia: 28. (19 received, 5 on the way, 4 expired).
- Taiwan 1 (because, at the request of the Postcrossing team, after 4 expired cards to Russia, I once turned off the option “repeatedly to the same country”. Then I turned it back on immediately).
This is discussed in some other threads.
It could perhaps make the situation worse. More cards travelling fast, more free slots, more cards to this frequent country.
Like if a German gets USA address, it can take two weeks to get there and the slot is taken during that time. No one is sending “back” to this German address during this time. If the German member sends to Germany, it can take 3-4 days, even less, and the German slot is open again, they get more travelling slots faster, and the frequent country gets even more common.
So, would choosing “not to my own country” actually help more?
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I don’t mind taking the edge off for someone who prefers so send to greater variety of countries. I personally benefit from the imbalance 
It saves me money on postage because with the repeated countries on I send pretty much exclusively to Europe, which is cheaper here. With expensive postage and rates going up, it can help to be more active. But I understand that for peope from outside of Europe it may be the other way around.
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Speaking from the perspective of a Newbie from Germany. I have six postcards traveling at the moment and no more open slots. One to Germany, three to Russia, one to Belarus and one to the US. Four of these are to members who have not been logged in for quite a while, including the one to Germany. So I guess I will have to wait a long time until I get at least one more open slot.
Now how about allowing 2-3 extra slots to people who want them under the provision that these will always be addresses from “the big three”? This would probably help deplete the pool of addresses from those countries and would make it easier to get started and increase the number of slots for us beginners. Win-win.
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Wow! I’m getting a headache trying to understand all the recommendations! I’m one of the “big 3” - USA - and leave all my options turned on. Since my postal service won’t accept mail to Russia right now, 99% of my postcards are going to Germany and USA. It’s still fun, but I can see why some people would like more options. I still get cards from all other countries, so I don’t mind.
BTW, I think it would be fun to have some Repetition Days and see what happens!
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Most of the official postcards I receive say “I’m very excited because it’s the first time I send a postcard to your country”. I can understand this need from the users to have more diversity. For my part, I have the option turned on to send postcards to repeated countries and for now I feel comfortable with it. I only get the USA and Germany. I like it because I save money by sending postcards to the USA and I have almost never had expired postcards from Germany.
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I undestand where you are comming from but, you said it as well, it will be discriminatory to make it mandatory just for some countries. They already get a lot of negativity by simply existing, because they are the most frequent countries and some people don’t cut down dissapointment from “Ah, I got [common country] AGAIN”.
And also this:
I know that for some people in the USA (that country is the one I’ve heard about the most) actually like the “Own country” option because they have postcard-specific value for stamps, it is waaay cheaper and they also try to “get all 50 states”, since some are more common than others. And, over all, while that could be a solution, I’m trying to think and gather ideas that will make people want to join, instead of choosing solutions that, yeah, they would work, but they need to be implemented as mandatory things for people from certain countries to do.
After all, this is a hobby, I wouldn’t want to make people “pay” for the country they are living on.
Also, I cannot quote everyone who’s been talking about “Own country” option, but it is something that doesn’t really make a difference if there are not a lot of users from your own country.
I’ve been a year in Postcrossing and during the year I’ve lived in two not-rare-but-not-frequent countries: 
Norway and 
Spain.
So, far. I received 1 postcard from while I was in Norway. Didn’t send one from and I have yet to receive or send a postcard to Spain. It will be way cheaper to send to my own country and I have the option ON but it is to no help.
I also prefer sending to as many different countries as possible.
But, I don’t know if it is just me, lately I feel like I am in PC with my “Repeated countries” option ON (I don’t, I double checked).
All I have lately to send is , and
And for receiving, it is the same three + 
It feels a little bit ridiculous, this has been going for some time. While I undestand that now I get - in proportion - more addresses to Russia because my country has not banned sending mail there, it looks like those are the only ones I’m sending to.
My country can not send to 81 territories, true. But most of them are on the Rare group for PC. And there are 248 territories in PC, that’s still 167! I don’t know what’s going on.
That’s how all this started. I spent some time in the forum reading about other people’s comments in repetition, diversity in sending-receiving, and trying to find some kind of way to, while not decreasing the chance to get a common country, increase the chance to get a less common one while at it.
To me, if this trend of sending to , and continues, I will just try to turn on Repeated countries and test a bit @HookedonPostcards theory by myself.
That is why I thought about suggesting making something that could make a lot of people try the Repeated countries option. It is a way not to put the “problem” or “guilt” in the most frequent countries, because it is nobody’s individual responsability to be “many people” in PC. While making it an activity that is nicer because a lot of people are doing it at the same time + everyone still gets a chance to decide if they want to join or not.
2 Likes
I have to add that I am not suggesting this to be mandatory. Just thinking that it would help maybe more than sending in one’s own country.
I have had repeated countries on for long, now I have 48 travelling, 1 to China, all the rest to Germany and USA 
I would be curious to see how it would look like after one day everyone taking repeated countries
Maybe this could be advertised as fairness? At some point some members wrote how previously the addresses were given in a better way, one for one, and not in groups and they thought it was more fair than what now is done. (I don’t know if this is true.) So, if you want the next free address, it would be what it is, so repeated would be always on for everyone. Who knows, maybe not having repeated countries on has some affect on this when addresses are given multiple times (when for example German member is waiting for 10 cards, but ten members don’t want to send repeated, it will wait those who like repeated (or have enough other countries?), and the “non repeated” must be given address too, so they will get someone’s who is not waiting for a card, and/or it will be their extra/in advance card.
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I think the problem of always the same countries is caused by the option of always different countries.
If you remove the option to get only different countries, everyone gets more variety again.
An example with random numbers to make it clearer.
Example:
You have 300 addresses in Germany that need to get a card.
And you have 100 postcrossers asking for addresses.
Then each postcrosser can send 3 cards to Germany.
But if 25 of them only want to send 1 to Germany
75 postcrossers have to send 275 cards to Germany.
That’s 3.66 cards per person.
If 50 postcrossers only want to send 1 card to Germany,
then the 50 others have to send 250 cards to Germany.
That’s 5 cards per person.
If 75 postcrossers only want to send 1 card to Germany
the 25 others have to send 225 cards to Germany.
That’s 9 cards per person.
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@meiadeleite
There has been discussion in several topics about the option to send cards to the same countries or different countries. You can choose that in your settings. On a day like today when many people send cards, is it possible to make it the same for everyone for 1 day that everyone get multiple addresses to the same countries. That the option to only select addresses from different countries is disabled for 1 day for everyone.
Or is that already happening on days like today?
The subject comes up in all kinds of topics and that people don’t like it that much. I understand the postcrossing situation well, but maybe we can help think along about possible solutions.
See also: More happy mailbox days with the official PC and Repetition day
I moved this post back here, as it was off-topic where it was posted.
This is already the case. The fact is, we just don’t have enough people that should receive postcards, compared to how many are sending them… This is true on any normal day by the way, but it is especially so on a day like today, where 70k+ postcards are sent. Postcrossing was not made for this, so we do a little magic, send postcards in advance, etc… but if we run out of addresses, all bets are off. We might not even be able to sort out an address for someone requesting it at all — let alone an address in an exotic country.
The algorithm will always try its best to give a different country if it can… but if it cannot, then whatever it can find is better than nothing. Repetitions will always automatically increase if we have less addresses available.
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Thank you for your answer. I understand.
Good to read that today everyone gets multiple addresses in the same countries.
And that the option for sending to different countries does not apply today.
I have recently become active again and ill put in my experience today. I have the repeated countries box off and requested 17 addresses today. I ended up with:
Germany 7
USA 6
China 1
France 1
Slovakia 1
Taiwan 1
I have the send to my own country box on, that saves allot of postage these days and is fast, sometimes 3 days to arrive.
I have no idea if checking the repeated countries box would change anything.
My experience is similar.
I’m in a country that does not send to Russia.
So out of 16 cards, 8 went to Germany, 5 to US and 1 each to Finland, United Kingdom and Australia. I don’t have repeated countries on.
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