06 October 2017 - 700,000 practitioners across 213 countries, 50 million postcards moving around the world at a rate of 1,000 every hour. Just some of the statistics involved in Postcrossing, the global mail hobby, celebrated this week with a new stamp from An Post.

Postcrossing is an international postcard exchange project that helps complete strangers to send post cards to each other from random locations all over the world. This week Irish and International Postcrossers have been gathering at Dublin’s GPO to celebrate their hobby and help launch the new stamp which An Post unveiled on Thursday.

The international rate stamp (€1.35) was designed by Design HQ using an illustration from artist Cathy Dineen featuring a colourful display of postcards being passed from person to person around the world. Copies of the stamp and an attractive First Day Cover envelope are available from main post offices, the stamp counters at the GPO or online at irishstamps.ie 

Postcrossers use a single website www.postcrossing.com to registers their details and request an address and postcard ID to use when sending out that first postcard. They send a postcard to the address given and when it lands the recipient registers the postcard using its postcard ID. Now the postcrosser is eligible to receive a postcard from another user and the process continues. Postcrosser can have up to five postcards travelling around the world at any one time.