... certainly La Poste will be the winner of the issue of a national letter rate stamp marking the commercial opening of the new high-speed railway in Eastern France, connected to Luxemburg, Germany and Switzerland railways. By its legend, the stamp focusses on the national company service TGV Est-européen which will be opposed to Deutsche Bahn ICE on the same railway. The 0,54 € gummed stamp is designed by Louis Briat using the pictures gave by the SNCF (nothing amazing from my point of view).
Why am I looking for a winner there ? A money winner.
Claude Jamet seems to have got a rumor about the apparition of this stamp in an adhesive rolls. How would it be issued will have speculative consequences on the French philatelic market... once again this year.
More simply for La Poste. While I was waiting in line at the temporary post office inside the Gare de l'Est, in Paris, I carefully watched what the others were buying. Tourists pasing by to take a train or visiting Paris bought some stamps for the occasion or to make postcards with the special cancellation.
But, more juicy, were French collectors : many bought the stamps by whole sheets of 50 stamps (27 €, equivalent to 36 US dollars). Why ? Private mail certainly and philatelic correspondance surely. If they are real fanatic collectors : to be able to get by mail the more-than twenty special cancellations that are at disposal this week-end (and for one month by requests) in cities that are now stations of this TGV. And if you want to make whole series in order to sell them later, you make more than one...
Will philatelic associations make some profit thank to twenties of souvenirs ? La Poste was not helping them : every buyer was offered a postcard figuring the stamp. So, simple tourist just has to pay 0,54 € to create his personal (and sufficient) souvenir.
My award to the most original souvenir to this man : he sticks the stamp on a A-3 page of paper, with a corner covering his train ticket on the first TGV Est he took this sunday morning. Prudent, he made photocopies of this tickets on A-3 yellow pages, with one stamp on each, first day cancelled... soon on eBay ?
And me ? are you asking. Did I pledge allegiance to 50-stamp sheets godness and first day cancel ? I arrived with the idea of buying ten stamps (four for immediate use for myself and foreign collectors, and six for my future mail). Unluckily for La Poste, a woman took so long to watch at every souvenirs available than I dropped to four stamps. My stamps-for-mail stock has got far beautier stamps than this one.
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