A to Z Blogging Challenge 2018: I is for Irregularly Shaped Postcards

(My theme for April's A to Z blogging challenge is postcards. If you want, read my intro post).

What constitutes an irregularly shaped postcard? Technically, it's an odd-shaped postcard, but I needed a topic for the letter I. To me, it's any postcard that isn't rectangular or square. Although, the USPS has strange postal regulations that can be difficult to understand but include that a postcard has to be rectangular. From what I gather, the regulations are so finicky because of the U.S. sorting machines.

Those machines seem as angry as their human counter parts. I get damaged mail all the time. I wonder how mail then moves in other countries where you are allowed to mail things that you can't mail here supposedly?

For example, I have received a few square postcards (mainly from the Netherlands where these seem popular). Doesn't mail that comes into the country have to ride the sorting machines here too? The square postcards arrive here just fine. Or perhaps they're being hand-sorted?

I do know that some mail qualifies as "non-machinable" and there is an extra postage fee for that because this mail has to get hand-sorted. So, it's possible that the square ones get separated when they come in and get processed by hand. (Of course they can't charge me for that as the senders already paid correct postage in their country). I would ask my local postal workers, but they're grumpy, except for one lady, and I usually forget what I want to ask when I see her.

Anyway, while our post office might deem square postcards odd-shaped, in this context I am referring to what I stated above (non-rectangular and non-square). Until I started exchanging postcards, I had no idea that they even came in shapes other than rectangular.

For example, I received a postcard from South Korea that has cat ears. It was sent without an envelope, and I would have been quite upset had it gotten damaged. The post office did good on this one. So, that was my first odd-shaped card that I received.

What totally blew me away though are the cat cards that you see above (the ruler is to give you an idea as to their size, which is smaller than a regular postcard). Not only are they odd-shaped, but they also don't fit the size regulation of the USPS.

That's right, postcards here have to be a minimum of 3.5 x 5 inches. (I believe letters have to be at least that big too because of those dreaded machines. I did receive an international letter once that was only 3 by 4.25 inches. While it did get here, it was all wrinkled and abused by aforementioned machines). I also received a postcard that was 3.5 x 4.25 inches (the size of a Polaroid, for you older folks like me) from Taiwan (without an envelope). This one survived without problems, amazingly!

The USPS also has maximum size specifications, but I don't want to get into that right now because it will be addressed in a future post soon. Anyway, as you can see by the picture below that I took of the reverse, these cute cat cards have all the makings of a real postcard: lines for the address and a stamp outline for the postage stamp. Luckily, the sender put them in an envelope and mailed them that way.

It makes me wonder though: If they make cards like these, does that mean in other countries you can actually send them through the mail without an envelope? Don't other countries use sorting machines? So, the cat-eared postcard from South Korea is, so far, the only odd-shaped card I have received that was sent the way a postcard is supposed to be sent (without an envelope). That doesn't make the other two less special to me though.