He is a hero in his home country and second-highest goalscorer for the national football team and now Sweden striker Zlatan Ibrahimović will be the face most postmen, mail senders and recipients will frequently see in his homeland.
During Postex, I saw on display by a stamp dealer an envelope on which was stamped a very familiar picture for a Dutchman: the statue of the Docker in Amsterdam. Why would you find such an image on an envelope issued by the Israeli postal service?
on March the 13th, the United States Postal Service released a new Forever stamp honoring the late ’60s rock guitarist as part of its Music Icons series. Hendrix is considered to be one of the most influential guitarplayers who ever lived. He unleashed a revolution in guitarplaying by using new chords, feedback and different new recordingtechniques.
I once knew an eccentric philatelist who wanted something special: a collection of all the countries of the world, past and present, with a single postage stamp for each country. If the name of the country changed then that had to be taken into account, e.g. one stamp from Ceylon and therefore one from its successor Sri Lanka. It appears that such a collection is easy to obtain, but appearances can be misleading. After all, what is a country?
Earlier in March this year, British politician Tony Benn passed away, aged 88. Benn served as Postmaster General in the Labour Party government of Prime Minister Harold Wilson (1964-66) and was instrumental in establishing the National Postal Museum, which closed in 1998. This was the predecessor of what is now the British Postal Museum and Archive.
Each year the Estonian Post (Eesti Post) issues a birdstamp entitled ‘Bird of the year’. The partridge, the plover, the shrike, the yellow wagtail, and the elk were the subject in previous issues in this series. This year, on the 20th of March they came up with a beautiful stamp depicting a Kingfisher.
Once, long ago, I purchased a book: The Guinness Book of Stamps, Facts & Feats. It stood a little lost in a corner of a bookcase. I noticed it again when I was looking for another book, that’s how it often goes. Needless to say, the book contains many fascinating facts regarding stamps and everything related to them.
Just inside the entrance of PostBeeld’s shop in Haarlem is a recreation of a 19th century stamp shop window display. It contains a collection of old philatelic literature and accessories. It is also the private collection of PostBeeld owner Rob Smit.
In a series of short articles Rob takes an item from the museum and explains its history. Of course you can see the originals at PostBeeld’s Haarlem shop.
I bought a fake. No, I ‘m not being ripped off, I knew that the stamps were not right, but I bought them anyway. I wanted them because I wanted to study the forgeries more closely myself. There are many different methods and types of counterfeiting. It is no exaggeration to say that the forging of stamps actually started in the same year in which they first saw the light. The purpose then was not to sell the forgeries to gullible collectors, but simply to save money on the cost of sending a letter.
This week German stampcatalogue publisher Michel issued the 39th edition of number four of their Overseas catalogue which contains North Africa.
Due to it’s size it’s been split up in two separate parts. This issue is part one.
It was about time, since the last edition of this catalogue dates back to 2009, so a lot of changes have been made to its contents. See all changes in this article.