Paper Drift Stamp Album: All 13 Stamps and the Post Office

The stamp album in Paper Drift is a collection of 13 jigsaw stamps that you build one piece at a time. Every stamp drifting across the shaft in an Endless or Daily Drift run is worth 5 points and carries one puzzle piece. You drag the pieces into place on the Showcase’s STAMPS view, and completing all 13 unlocks the Philatelist plane.

Repeats are not wasted either: they become copies you can post off for rarer pieces. Here is how the whole album works, from the first piece to the last.

How to catch stamp pieces

Stamps drift sideways across the shaft, so you have to steer to meet them. Fly through one and it is yours: +5 points on the spot, or +10 if you catch it while a thermal is doubling your points. Each stamp glows in the colour of its rarity, so you can see at a glance whether it is worth a detour.

A few rules worth knowing:

• Endless and Daily Drift only. Time Attack lays no stamps at all, and in Race they are just points.
• Pieces are banked when the run ends. Let the run finish and they go into the album. Quit from the pause screen and you keep none, exactly like coins.
• They are not everywhere. A run meets a little over one stamp every hundred points, so each one counts.

All 13 stamps in the album

The album has five rarities, the same colours as the Showcase’s figures: green common, blue rare, red mythic, yellow legendary and rainbow ultra. The rarer the stamp, the bigger the puzzle.

Stamp	Rarity	Pieces	Where it turns up
Paper Dart	Common	4	Anywhere
Paper Boat	Common	4	Anywhere
Folded Crane	Common	4	Anywhere
Balloon Day	Rare	6	Anywhere
Night Light	Rare	6	Anywhere
Harvest Mill	Rare	6	Anywhere
Noon Oasis	Rare	6	Desert only
Deep Singer	Mythic	9	Anywhere
Dragon Kite	Mythic	9	Anywhere
Night Visitors	Mythic	9	Aliens only
Dusk Caravan	Mythic	9	Desert only
Golden Airship	Legendary	12	Anywhere
The Misprint	Ultra	12	Anywhere

That is 96 pieces in all. Each stamp is an original picture: a dart on a summer sky, a whale breathing out through the swell, a sheet the press ran upside down “before anyone noticed”.

Two things decide what you catch. First, the rarer tiers only start turning up deeper into a run, so the yellow and rainbow pieces belong to long runs. Second, any piece can come at any time: a piece you already hold is exactly as likely as one you are missing.

The map-only stamps

Three stamps belong to a single map, and nothing else will hand them to you, not even the Post Office:

• Night Visitors: a saucer beaming a paper plane up out of a sleeping field. Only on the Aliens map.
• Noon Oasis and Dusk Caravan: only in the Desert, one after the other. The Desert deals the oasis until you hold all of it, then the caravan.

On its own map, roughly a third of the stamps you meet are pieces of that map’s stamp, so they fill up fast once you are there. The Aliens is one of the three maps every new save starts with. The Desert has to be reached first: a run moves on to a new map every 400 points, and every map you fly into stays unlocked.

Putting a stamp together

Open the Showcase from the round keys on the title screen and switch to STAMPS. The album shows how many stamps you have completed, how many of the 96 pieces you have found, and how many are waiting to go in. A yellow dot marks every stamp with pieces to place.

Tap a stamp to open its puzzle table. The pieces you have found lie on a tray under the frame: drag each one to its place. The slot lights up gold when a piece is close to the right spot. That is the only help, because the picture only appears as you build it.

The table turns like a page: swipe to move to the next stamp. When the last piece goes in, the stamp keeps the date you completed it, and the first time you complete each stamp, +5 energy lands in your Storage to use whenever you like.

Repeats and copies

Because any piece can come at any time, you will catch pieces you already have. A repeat goes onto its stamp’s tray next to its twin, drawn as a stack with its count. Until the stamp is complete, it just waits.

Once a stamp is complete, the sheet on its table becomes a copy, and the repeats are what you build it from, exactly like the first time. Every finished copy goes onto that stamp’s pile. Those copies are what the Post Office runs on.

The Post Office

The Post Office key, a gold post horn on a blue enamel plate, sits in the album’s header. It opens once you have completed your first stamp:

1. Buy an envelope with coins. Each envelope is the colour of one rarity.
2. Stick five finished copies of that rarity on it, dragging them off their piles by hand. Colours never mix: a blue envelope only takes rare stamps.
3. Send it. The envelope is postmarked, folds itself into a paper plane and flies off. An envelope of the next colour flies back with one random piece of the next rarity: it opens in gold if the piece is new to your album, in grey if it is a repeat.

Envelope	Price	Takes 5 copies of	Brings back
Green	100 coins	Common stamps	1 rare piece
Blue	300 coins	Rare stamps	1 mythic piece
Red	500 coins	Mythic stamps	1 legendary piece
Yellow	1,000 coins	Legendary stamps	1 ultra piece

The odds are printed on the counter and again in the purchase confirmation, before any coin is spent: every piece an envelope can bring back is equally likely. Rainbow copies cannot be sent, since there is nothing above them. And the reply is never a map-only stamp: copies of Noon Oasis, Night Visitors or Dusk Caravan can go on an envelope of their colour, but to find those stamps you have to fly their map.

Your first envelope is free

The first time you catch a repeat, the results card tells you, and the next time you open the album the Post Office opens a short lesson on its own. It explains repeats and copies, then gives you a free green envelope. The common stamps it still needs are a gift, tied with a ribbon: drag them on and press SEND. What comes back is guaranteed to be a rare piece you do not have yet (or a rare repeat, if you already hold every rare piece). Tap LATER and the lesson waits for you.

The Philatelist plane

Complete all 13 stamps and the album pays the Philatelist plane: an envelope with the whole collection stuck on it, postmark and all. Like every plane in the Hangar it is cosmetic and flies exactly like the others, but it is the one that says you flew the Aliens and the Desert and put every piece in by hand.

Stamps count for quests too, from daily quests that ask you to collect a few, to mastery quests that ask you to complete 1, 3, 6 and finally all 13 stamps.

Quick tips for stamp collectors

• Read the drift early. Stamps slide across the shaft, so steer to where they will be, not where they are.
• Go long. Rarer pieces only turn up deeper, and every 400 points takes you to another map with its own chances.
• Never quit a run full of pieces from the pause screen. Let it end and they bank.
• Keep repeats. They are not clutter: they are your next envelope.

Collecting figures as well? Read our guide to the Showcase and its 67 window figures, and pick up a few extra points per run with these Paper Drift tips and tricks.

Questions

How many stamps are in the Paper Drift album?

Thirteen, made of 96 jigsaw pieces in all. Ten can turn up anywhere in the shaft, one only on the Aliens map and two only in the Desert.

Where do I find stamp pieces?

In Endless and Daily Drift runs. Every stamp drifting across the shaft is one piece. Time Attack has no stamps, and in Race they only score points.

What are repeated stamp pieces for?

Once a stamp is complete, its repeats build copies of it. Five finished copies of one rarity, stuck on an envelope of that colour at the Post Office, bring back one random piece of the next rarity.

What do I get for completing the stamp album?

The Philatelist plane. Every stamp you complete for the first time also puts +5 energy in your Storage.

Can I buy stamps with coins or real money?

No. Coins buy the Post Office's envelopes, but the stamps you stick on them only come from pieces you catch in the shaft.