Just thought that I would take an opportunity to inform new members of how our Postcard exchanges work.

At this time there are no new exchanges in the works, but hopefully there will be a new one starting sometime soon.

We do have one IN-Envelope Exchange that is yet incompleat as of today. And I would like to ask those who are in this exchange who have not yet mailed your cards to please do so soon. Thank You!

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IN-Envelope Exchange
Send one New, Unused, Un-written on, Lighthouse postcard to each person on the exchange list. This exchange by being IN-Envelope allows the sender to add extras if they want to (not required). Some examples of extras that have been added in the past are: Extra postcards of the same lighthouse from different views, write ups or flyers of information about the lighthouse on the postcard, pictures that the sender has taken of the lighthouse on the postcard, Lighthouse Bookmarks, Lighthouse Calendars, or just any little extra that the sender wants to share.

NO Envelope Exchange
Address, stamp and mail one Lighthouse postcard to each person on the exchange list. You may want to add a short note saying hello on the card. Always remember to add your name to the card so the receiver knows who it came from.

Christmas Card Exchange
In this exchange we send a Lighthouse Christmas Card to each person on the list. It can be a store bought card or a home made card, but it must be a Christmas (Holiday) card and it must have a Lighthouse on it!

Round Robin
The person who starts the exchange puts 10 different Lighthouse Postcards into an envelope along with address labels for all participants and a list of order in which the Robin is to travel. He/She will mail the Robin to the first person on the list. That person will look at the cards and pick out as many cards as they want to keep, then replace cards of their own to replenish the count of 10 cards and mail the Robin to the next person. This process continues until the Robin returns to the starting sender. The two main rules to the Robin are if you take out 4 cards, you replace with 4 cards, so that there are always 10 cards for the next person to chouse from. And there must never be more than 2 of the same card in the envelope. (It’s ok to have several different cards of the same Lighthouse, but not more than 2 of the same card.) We ask that no one keep the Robin more than 2 or 3 days before sending on to the next person on the list as it takes this exchange awhile to make the round trip back to the starting sender.

Thanks for the explanation Stephanie. I had been wondering just how it worked. About how many cards would a person need to have to participate?

Well Laura that all depends... Like everything else here in the forums, participation seems to be dropping off. Back when I first joined the forums most Postcard Exchanges (IN-Envelope and NO Envelope) would consist of 25 to 30 people. Now days most exchanges run from 12 to 18 people. Same for the Christmas Card Exchange.

The Round Robin usually has about 6 to 8. If more than 8 join up we will usually run two Robins at the same time.

My best suggestion would be to buy 20 of the same postcard next time you see a card that you would want to use. Then when the exchange time came around if only 16 people joined up, you would have the extra 4 cards to use in future Round Robins.