10% Mark reached!

Wow, that was a big update. After I sorted through all my postcards, I found there was a huge stack of them that were never updated (from around September 2008). I updated all of them, and got a net gain of 25 counties, bringing me to a total of 315 out of 3141 postcards after the 4 today. That's more than 10%!

It's so great to have so many people willing to think of me on their travels. I want to especially thank Scott in Philly, Frankie, Big Dave, and J. Stephen Conn, all of whom I have never met, but they continually send me postcards every time they travel. Thanks guys!

Of course I can't forget my friends and family, with special thanks to the biggest contributors: my parents, who have contributed to 57 counties! Also thanks to Dan, Drennan, Theresa, and Melissa, and Drew, who went above and beyond the normal "Ok, sure, I'll send you one" response that I expect from friends and family, and continually send me postcards when they travel.

20% is just around the corner :) Keep 'em coming!

Tips for Finding Postcards

I've been collecting these postcards for a couple of years now, and I've even, on occasion, gotten to go out to smaller counties and send myself a postcard.

Here are a few tips for finding me a postcard while you're on the road. Some of you veterans may have already figured this stuff out :)

Where to find postcards (in order of likelihood of finding one):

• Chambers of Commerce. Every region over 2,000 population all the way up to the largest cities have a chamber of commerce. If you don't know what it is: a chamber of commerce is when a bunch of businesses form an alliance and all pay annual dues in order to have a single organization that promotes all business throughout their area. Since the chamber is in the business of promoting their area, it is likely to have a postcard about its area to spread the word. Chambers also usually have racks of brochures about things to do in the area.
  
  In fact, once I went to a chamber and asked them if they had any postcards. They had to go in a back room and pull one out of the back of a filing cabinet, but sure enough, they had one!
  
  
• Museums. For slightly larger cities (10,000 population) there is usually at least one museum. Often the museums are owned by the chamber of commerce or local historical society, so they are in the business of promoting their city and are likely to have a postcard about that museum. And the smaller the city, the more likely the museum is free!
  
  
• Airports. Obviously only the bigger cities have airports, but they all invariably have postcards in the airport gift shop. If you wonder how you're going to send a postcard when you have a layover, often the airport has a mail drop slot somewhere.
  
  I did this in the Minneapolis airport, but the drop slot was in a completely different concourse and I didn't have time to get to it. So I asked the gift shop employee if they would send it to me, and sure enough, they did! (Note: I realize the scan in the link is broken and I plan to fix it)
  
  
• National and State Parks. The only time I've been unable to get a postcard at a National or State Park was when they were completely out of postcards. I think if you look at the postcards that J. Stephen Conn has sent me, you'll see there are a lot from National Parks (mostly from his trip to the Rockies).
  
  
• Antique Stores/Gift Shops. Often in small towns you'll find a quaint little historic "main street" shopping area. Often this is also where the Chamber of Commerce is. But shops are open on the weekends, whereas the Chambers are usually not. However, you are definitely less likely to find them here. UPDATE: Audrey also commented that gift shops at larger RV Parks will often have postcards.
  
  
• "Travel Stop" Gas Stations. This is more of a hit or miss than the others, but if you can find a large gas station like a Buc-ee's or a Love's Travel Stop, they may have a state postcard, as a last resort.
  
  
• UPDATE: Lobbies of Motels. Audrey mentioned that she's had luck finding postcards in lobbies of motels as well.
  

Where not to find postcards (I've found that checking these places is a waste of time):

• Note: The exception to all of the places in this list is in tourist areas in large cities (like downtown Houston, Baltimore's Inner Harbor, or anywhere in New York City). In these areas it's hard not to find a postcard.
  
  
• Pharmacies. You would think they do, since they have a ton of greeting cards, but I have yet to see a single postcard in a pharmacy, even non-chain local ones. I always found this to be surprising for Walgreens, since a lot of Walgreens carry T-shirts with local towns or high schools on them. But alas, no postcards.
  
  
• Grocery Stores. Pretty much the same reason as pharmacies. This goes for Wal-Mart too.
  
  
• Schools. I've never been able to find a school postcard anywhere.
  

Or, if you really want to get creative, you can do what my parents did and print out a postcard with a portable photo printer on blank postcards and send it to me: dad & mom

Hope that helps all you postcard hunters out there! And thanks!

1 year, 208 Counties

It's been one year since my first postcard! Thank you everyone for a great year of postcard collecting! As of today, I'm all caught up with 208 postcards! It was a great surge recently, with all my regular readers going on road trips :)

So far it looks like I have every state represented except 4: North Dakota and South Dakota, Alabama, and West Virginia.

The leader in number of postcards is Texas with 37 postcards (thanks to my parents), followed by Missouri with 15 postcards (thanks to Frankie), and California with 13 postcards (thanks to everyone!).

Keep them coming! At this rate, I'll be done in 15 years!

That's a lot of postcards!

As I did my update today, I realized that I'm only 10 days away from my 1-year anniversary of my first postcard. I'm also only 6 postcards away from 200! I think 200 per year would be a great rate to stick to.

So any of you readers out there that live in counties I don't have. Send one ASAP so I can get to 200 before the 29th!

By the way, here is a photo of what all my postcards look like when spread out on the floor:

The Post Office is at it again

Well it seems that the post office changed rates right under my nose. It is now 27 cents! Get out your penny stamps! I had some people complain that their postcards didn't get to me, and I hope this wasn't the reason.

A couple of website changes

One of the #1 questions I get from readers is "Do you have a postcard from _____ county yet?" To answer that, I put a search form in the right side of the page where you can input the name of the county, and see if I have made a post about it yet.

Also, I'm in the process of changing the look of the website. You may notice that the background of the website had changed to a mosaic of postcards I have received. I've also got someone working on creating a new banner for the top of the page, so that my template is not the same as the other hundreds of bloggers that chose this template.

Thanks again to everyone that's helping me with this quest! At this rate, I should have my collection completed in 10 short years!

A Few Statistics

Since I sent requests out to all counties in the US starting with the letter 'A', I thought I would go through my database and pull a few statistics to see what I came up with.

(All stats refer to counties that start with A only)

Overall:
Total Number of Counties: 112
Total Counties that sent postcards: 41 (36.6%)

Requested/Received from:
-Chambers of Commerce: 19 out of 61 (31.1%)
-Tourism/Visitor's Bureaus: 12 out of 37 (32.4%)
-Historical Societies/Museums: 6 out of 7 (85.7%)
-Government Offices/Parks: 0 out of 6 (0.0%)
-Individuals: 0 out of 1 (0.0%)

So if the stats tell me anything, I should try for Historical Societies first, then go to Chambers and Bureaus, which have roughly the same response rate. I should also only try governmental contacts as a last resort (my postcard from Kalawao County, Hawaii from was a National Park, so it's not quite 0%, just for letter As). However, in Massachusetts, I started with Historical Societies, and out of 8 requests sent, I got 2 back. So I guess in the end, it doesn't matter too much, it will be based on the individual who gets my request!

Postcrossing: The Postcard Crossing Project

A friend passed this link on to me: http://www.postcrossing.com/

It's basically a website in which you sign up with your mailing address, then for every postcard you send out to a random person, a different random person sends you one back. Although this is a worldwide site, there is a checkbox that you can select to limit sent/received postcards from your country only.

I probably won't go all out on this, because sending hundreds of postcards can be expensive. But I still want to try it out and see what I get :)

I'm still here!

In case anyone is stumbling upon this blog and seeing that it hadn't been updated in a while, I just wanted to let you know that I'm still here and still collecting postcards. I have a stack of new ones sitting by my computer that I haven't scanned yet. Stay tuned for more and keep those postcards coming!

All of the As!

I'm sure at least some of my readers have gone through my list of received postcards and wondered... "why do most of these start with the letter a?" The reason is simple: I've been sending out requests for postcards alphabetically, one by one. And today, I've finally completed sending requests to all 112 U.S. counties that start with the letter A: from Abbebille County, South Carolina to Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana.

Hopefully, a couple weeks after this last batch, I can use this as a representative sample to see what proportion of requests will be fulfilled. Counties that start with "A" make up 3.56% of total US counties. So once I get my total count, I should just be able to divide the total number of positive responses by 0.0356 and I should get, roughly, the total postcards I'll receive after all the requests are done. That's assuming that counties that start with "A" aren't inherently more/less generous than other counties, of course :) In fact, I may be tainting the data just by writing this! Oh well!

Lapse in Postcards

Ok, I realize it's been a month now since I've updated the blog. I do have a collection of 4-5 postcards that were sent to me during that time that I haven't put up yet. I expect to get them up this weekend. Don't worry, I haven't given up!

Postmark woes

Well it looks as if I can't count on the postmarks to verify that a postcard came from a particular county. If you look at the Adams County, Nebraska postcard, you'll see that the postmark only has the first three digits of the zip code printed on it. I looked at the envelopes the other postcards came in and they were all postmarked the same way: with only the first three digits of the postmark. What's worse is that the first three digits don't even match up from where they were sent from!

My guess is that everything gets sent off to a regional sorting center and then postmarked. Does anyone out there know for sure what's going on? I know if I send a metered mailing from my office, it has our zip code on it. Has the post office stopped doing that?

So Far So Good!

I've talked to a few friends and family and sent out 20 requests to various tourism bureaus, websites, and chambers of commerce, and I've gotten some great responses!

I have friends in Cincinnati, OH, Bay Area, CA, Austin, TX, and San Antonio, TX who all said they would send me a postcard. Thanks guys!

Of the 20 requests sent out, I've already gotten two responses! I want to send a special thanks to the Columbia-Adair County Tourism Commission in Kentucky and the Travel and Tourism Guide to Natchez, Mississippi (Adams County) for their extremely fast responses!

You can also see on the top right of the blog I now have a link to a map of counties I've sent emails to and gotten responses from. Go ahead, give it a try :)

3,141 Postcards

I'm trying to get a postmarked postcard from every county and county-equivalent in the United States sent to me. It can be sent by anyone, but it has to be postmarked from a zip code within the county. Ideally, I would like the postcard to be about the county it was sent from, but it's not a requirement.

Right now I'm going through and soliciting local Chamber of Commerces and Visitor's Bureaus to see if they will send me one for free. Once I get a P.O. Box, I will allow unsolicited postcards to be sent to me from loyal readers of this site :)