I am relatively new to Postcrossing and I am curious? do you keep all of the postcards that you receive?
personally, i keep only the ones that I really like, and recently I have been saving the stamps ( snipping them out from the cards) for some sort of collage or something (i haven’t decided quite yet).
For now I’ve kept all of them. My older ones are in albums (2019-2020), my newer ones (2021) are in a box yet to be put into an album.
One day I might have to do away with some, the idea kind of breaks my heart though, so not sure if that’ll actually ever happen.
I store mine in boxes like small shoe boxes with dividers. No I wouldn’t throw them. Its social history & people collect them. If you really don’t want to keep some of them bundle & sell them on ebay/donate the money to charity.
I do use some old postcards in my junk journals but they aren’t my postcrossing ones.
I found a plastic file box with a lid that snaps on at a Staples once which holds mine pretty well. I also got some ‘large index card’-sized cardboard dividers with tabs so I could label each country and find things more easily. I think it’s really fun to look back through them! I’m also a children’s librarian, so sometimes I bring them in for the kids at my library to look through.
I also did a forum-based postcard swap a few years ago with the kids at the library I was at then, and I kept all the postcards we received from that in a half-size three-ring binder on my desk so the kids could see what had been going back and forth. It’s all about the number of postcards you want to keep and how you want to interact with them, I think - the three-ring binder wouldn’t have worked for more than, say, 75 postcards, but the file box is a lot more versatile.
I have a storage box made just for postcards etc like this: https://www.lape.net/logik-arkistolaatikko-leuchtturm
I also put some onto the wall hanging from mini clothespins.
I am only a beginner but I plan to save every card I receive. They are all so precious to me
I haven’t received much yet, but I’ve sorted them into a photo album. I wouldn’t throw them away. That would be too bad. Everyone who sent them tells something about themselves and has put effort and time into it.
I think I’m in the minority here, but I don’t keep mine. I enjoy them when I get them, pass on a few to my fiancee and to my daughter if they’d be particularly interested in them, and with the rest, the stamps are cut off and sent to other PCers who collect stamps, then the cards go into the recycling.
Before anyone gets offended, I come from a childhood with a mom who was a hoarder and have struggled all my life with those tendencies as well. I’ve never gotten to the level it was with her, but I’m still trying to break away from that for myself and keeping anything ‘nonessential’ is a very bad idea for me. It rapidly turns into clutter which gets overwhelming.
They are in a shoebox, not too big. I didn’t know that some people throw away the cards. I haven’t yet got something so bad that I could throw it away.
So far I have received only 2 postcards, but I have a photo album where I keep rare editions, retro postcards and postcards that family members bring me from traveling. The only issue with using photo album is that “pockets” are not big enough to fit bigger cards or irregular shapes.
Also, my father was engaged in stamp collecting in his youth and my grandfather, his father, brought a special stamp album from Germany a long time ago. I continue his hobby and add new stamps to the collection. It is also convenient to store postcards in this stamp album
I’m so new that I’ve only sent 10 and haven’t found any in my mailbox yet, but I plan to display incoming post cards to a wall spot at my desk, then rotate into a container. Always something new to enjoy. I already have an exciting bin full of cards to mail out!
Reading replies i realized how many of us likes to display our postcards. I wanted to decorate my room with postcards too, but there is quite a serious problem: damage to postcards from the sun, air and humidity. I already had a problem with the warping and darkening of postcards hung above my desk.
I have a mini easel where I display my postcards. When I send out a new card, twice a week, I display a new card (I usually have a stack of three or four waiting to be displayed). After they are displayed I keep them in a box organized by date.