Hosted My First ATC Swap

Today I spent time swapping out ATCs for an ATC Swap that I am hosting. This is the first swap that I am hosting. The theme is "Baby". The requirements were that there must be an image of at least a baby face on the card, everything else was up to the players.

I am learning some lessons as I go. I think I will write these up and post them on another day.

My favorite part of this is seeing all the different ATCs that people make. I also am keeping one from each player so I get to choose my favorite one of each grouping, which is great!

Originally I said it was a 5/4 which meant that they send me 5 and they get back 4. However since I had about a dozen participants (in the end), I decided to make one ATC for each person. Now each person is getting 5 back so in reality it was a 5/5 swap.

I really think that for all of the time and energy that I spent that sending one extra so the hostess can keep one is not asking too much. A few people sent a few extra goodies in the way of ephemera to me as a gift which was GREATLY appreciated and very fun to receive. Since I first heard of that practice I have been doing that for all the hostesses.

On one of the chat lists a recent discussion was about that topic and some said that they would refuse to participate in a swap in which the hostess wanted to keep one for herself. I hope that each person who feels that way will someday host a swap and see all the time that it takes. I would estimate that including emails back and forth through this whole process plus preparing the swap and going to the post office, that I have spent about 5 or 6 hours on this task!

One bummer is that someone from the Netherlands said she sent her envelope on December 7 but to date it has not arrived, so she did not participate in the swap after all. I wonder if it will just be delayed in getting here or if it is truly lost?

Anyway I look forward to hosting another swap in the near future. I really liked hosting, it was worth the time and effort!