Saturday, November 12

Par le vous postcards!

Hello all,
I was just working on my postcrossing as a lot of my cards were registered this week after making long trips to China and Russia.  I decided to get my new victims and low and behold they are all living in France!  (Notice I did not say French)  I had the ability of drawing up to 5 people - what are the odds they would all be from the same country?  I have drawn 3 from Russia in a row and 2 lived in the same house, but not only have I never had any from France as of yet on Postcrossing, I received 5 in one day?  I think the lottery is calling my name to play today. Too bad all my spare money goes to stationery and stamps!

My Best,
-b

P.s.  For those of you who do not know about Postcrossing;  It is a web site that you register for and it matches you with random addresses of people who would like mail - usually tourist postcards but they usually write a paragraph or so to tell you what they want.  You in turn get a postcard for every one you send (give or take depending on whether it gets lost or not).   It is supposed to be a random assignment and a surprise until received, but as you can see, sometimes it's not so random.  The site is free, but the biggest drawback is the international postage can be expensive.  Take sending 5 postcards to France for example.

6 comments:

  1. I believe you just gave me a problem for the Probability and Statistics class I teach! After looking at Postcrossing's data, I see there are 3,218 members registered from France out of 262,848 members total. I have calculator in hand and could post the answer, but those sneaky little teenagers with all their computer savvy would probably find it. Maybe next week.

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  2. I'm dying to know the odds, so give me a heads up in the mail. I promise to sneakily post the answer ! )

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  3. Postcrossing is such fun! I love the sneak peeks into other people's cultures and lives. And it makes every visit to the post office box exciting, as you never know what will arrive.

    P.S. Super frustrated about that missing letter. It was one of three items, all posted on the same day, that went missing. Can you say lazy postman?

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  4. Hi I'm one of the 5.

    Thanks very much and happy postcrossing.

    With kind regards and Salut from France

    Kim

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  5. You can choose not to have more than one Postcrossing postcard traveling to the same country at a time. I highly recommend it. Otherwise I'd have a billion going to China and Russia, and that is frustration to the max!

    I'm amazed by how few people seem to know about this option.

    In postcrossing, go to edit profile. At the very bottom, UNCHECK the box that says "Check if you prefer to send to repeated countries." And if you CHECK the box that says "Check if you would like to (also) send and receive postcards to and from your own country," then you will be guaranteed to have at least one postcard traveling to the USA at a time, since the USA has the most postcards sent. That saves a bit of $ on postage, though it means you'll receive a lot of postcards from the USA, too.

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  6. Thanks for the tip. I have seen those settings, but had not understood them fully. This is all a learning process!

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