Call me tacky or hoarder

In the 70's was when I've received my first post card, that I remember (anyway).  I was staying at my grand parents for the summer, and received a card from my parents who had decided to take a trip (without me, the nerve of them!).  That was the beginning of a long time love affair with post cards.  I've been accumulating them, over the years, in a box.  At some point, I made a scrap album with all the cards received.  Since they are only cards I've received (except a few that I've purchased myself as souvenir), I don't have thousands of them, but over a hundred for sure.  We have friends who travel lots (the lucky bastards!) and they all know how much I enjoy postcards, so they indulge my collection. Whenever we've travelled I've always made sure to send a bunch of cards.  I would prepare address labels before hand and only had to write the cards on location.  I could easily spend an afternoon writing cards.  In June, while in Punta Cana, I didn't send any because I thought it was outrageous how expensive everything was.  Besides the cards and the stamps, they wanted to charge me $15 USD for two post cards - so I left everything there, and didn't even buy a card as souvenir.

Over two years ago (already) I've joined Postcrossing.  The idea of exchanging postcards with people from all over the world was interesting, plus I love to write.  (I used to have eight pen pals in high school, and that not counting the people I kept in touch with via letter.  To this day, I still love to write and will by nice writing paper on occasion.  I think I would have loved to be in times where they used feather and ink and wax to seal their letters.  I've tried that, but by the time the letter gets to destination the wax seal is broken.  I still enjoyed the look of it all.) - wow, that was a long parentheses!   Since I've joined I've received 157 post cards to date.  I've sent 162, but only 152 have been received so far. Mail does get lost, still.  And also, some recipient don't register it when he/she got it.  Since I scan all cards I'm sending, I know I have sent 162.  At the beginning I was only sending cards from Montreal and the area.  Getting cards wasn't always easy, especially outside touristic areas.  I guess because my liking was "travel" based, I thought the receiver would enjoy seeing my town as well.  Over time, I've sent some with animals (Canadian ones, of course!) and sent a few from our travels (like Napa, Memphis, Vegas) but it doesn't feel right to me.

Recently I've joined a group on Bacefook, for QC postcrossing people, and decided to attend their first meet-up in October.  I figured it would be an occasion to meet other people enjoying post cards, like when I go to a scrap meet-up.  I get to scrap and meet other scrapers.  This time I'll get to write post cards with other post card freaks, like me.  While looking around on the site, I can't believe some people have thousands of cards.  Those babies do take up space. Some people will cover their walls with them.  I guess we all collect different things.  I used to collect pens, pins (I still do for lapel pins), key chains and match boxes.  I still have lots of matches, and it does hurt a little every time I use one box from my collection, but it was taking way too much room so I've decided to go through them slowly. As I look around our office, one could also say that I collect plush animals... the WWF ones (it's for a good cause!).

Maybe I'm a hoarder in the making?!  Oh no, what to do?  What to do?!