Well, that was interesting. I've not been very active during this sunspot lull, so I was astonished yesterday to receive an envelope from the QSL bureau. It had only one card in it, and the card was from a ham in... Texas. Now I know Texas was once a separate republic and there are probably people who still wish it was one, but this seemed very strange.

The card was quite nice. Glossy stock on both sides, full color on both sides, and heavy stock that won't curl or anything. The QSO details were apparently printed on the card at the same time as everything else. How did a domestic card arrive through the DX QSL bureau though? And who would pay for such expensive printing to QSL a domestic PSK31 QSO?

Examining the card closely this morning as I filled out a return QSL, I found my answer. It was printed and sent from www.globalqsl.com and they are located in Russia. For eight or nine cents a card, they will print custom color QSLs for you and mail them (via buro, obviously) to anywhere in the world. You just send them a DIF file of log entries and they do the rest. You can custom design both front and back, and change designs as often as you like.

They will also print traditional cards with a blank form to fill in QSO details, at an amazingly low price for two sided color.

I'm old fashioned enough that I really enjoy exchanging and displaying QSL cards. I've been printing my own color QSLs on an inkjet printer, which certainly is not as nice and won't last as long.

Has anyone dealt with this place? I'm dubious about giving a credit card number over the internet to someone in Russia, I guess.

[EDIT a day later: Further investigation finds that although the site is bilingual in English and Russian, it is apparently based in Israel. I found you can register for free and they will give you up to 50 QSLs in your custom design, printed and sent via the bureaus as a free sample bonus for signing up. So I've registered, and downloaded their custom design software. It requires me to boot Windows, ugh, but it does work...]