The stamps you can collect in Pond Passport

When Pond Passport shipped in September it had a few hundred stamps, and I thought that was a lot. Then the book kept growing. There are a lot more in it now, so I put them on one page where you can see what there is to collect, with the live count for every collection.

Browse the stamps if you want to skip straight to the pictures. Otherwise, here's the tour.

The collections

Cities. The ones you'd fly to and the ones you ended up in anyway. Chicago is in there, obviously. So are Fresno, Jackson, Mississippi and Cabo San Lucas, because the cities you've actually been to are rarely the famous ones.

US states. A state fills itself in the first time you log a moment anywhere inside it.

Countries. Countries and territories from the ISO list, each drawn as a flag. Bouvet Island is in here for the one person who gets there.

Continents. Yes, Antarctica has a stamp. No, I have not earned it yet, but it's on my list.

Landmarks. The Eiffel Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Blue Mosque, Himeji Castle, the Great Mosque of Djenné. Some you check in to at the gate. Some you collect years later because you suddenly remember you were there. My favorite to collect was Mount Kilimanjaro, because I climbed it to the summit.

On top of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Wonders. The wonders of the world, from Petra and Machu Picchu to the Great Wall, plus the Pyramids of Giza. The whole set is a lifetime project.

National parks. US national parks, so this one works like the paper passport you get stamped at the ranger station. Yosemite, Yellowstone and Zion are there. So are Pinnacles and Lake Clark.

Stadiums. Ballparks, arenas and stadiums across the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL, plus the world venues people cross oceans for, like the All England Club and Monza.

Experiences. The things you do at a place. The Chicago Marathon, Austin City Limits, Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Oktoberfest, Hanami in Japan. A marathon stamp asks whether you ran it or watched it, and the answer stays on the stamp.

Adventures. The newest collection. Skydiving, dog sledding, whale watching, the Northern Lights, a hot air balloon ride. These can happen anywhere, so they get their own collection, and you tag each one to where you did it. The tag shows up on that place's stamp too.

What makes a stamp fun

Most of them you don't do anything for. You already log moments in YourPond. Log a dinner in Lisbon and you collect Lisbon, Portugal and Europe in one go, and the moments you logged last year count too. The first time I opened my Passport it was already about 10% full.

The rest you tap yourself. Open the stamp and check in: the button says "I've been here" on a landmark and "I visited this" on a stadium. A landmark or a wonder collects the city and country around it, so one tap at the Colosseum also collects Rome, Italy and Europe.

Then there's the map. The states and countries you've been to fill in, and the gray ones sit there looking at you. I'm at 39 states and 17 countries. The gray part of that map is the most effective travel ad I have ever seen, and nobody paid for it.

You can also save a stamp to your Bucket List before you've been. When you finally go, it moves itself into your collection.

And if you're planning a trip, Stamps by place shows what you can collect in a country, state or city before you get there.

Who you were there with

A place is mostly the people you went with, so a stamp has room for them. Add the friends you traveled with and their profiles start showing the stamps you share. Each friend has a "See all", sorted by most recent together, first together or most moments, with a little "Since 2019" under each one.

On iPhone you can turn that list into a scrapbook and send it to the friend. It's my favorite thing we've shipped this year!

How to start

Pond Passport is free on every plan, on the web and in the iPhone app, and it's the same passport in both.

Open YourPond, find the Passport, and see what's already there from the moments you've logged. Then go find the first stamp you know you've earned and haven't tapped yet.

Browse the stamps · Stamps by place · How Pond Passport works · The original Passport post