Last flames on French mail ?

Between 1991 and 2005, the number of pictorial cancellations known as "flammes" has been falling in France. A graphic from the president of a local philatelic association prroves the fact in Summer issue of l'Écho de la timbrologie magazine. The cause - speeding the arrival of mail at the sorting center, its cancellation, its sorting - was explained in February 2007 issue of Timbres magazine.

Unless French postal operators decide to sell advertisment space on their cancellation or review this strategy of speed and easy cancellation because it is impersonal (so impersonal that sometime you don't even know where the mail came from), we are looking at the last flammes of France.


One of these last resistant, it encourages the selective sorting of domestic wastes (paper, plastic bottles, etc.). It was marked at Miramas, Bouches-du-Rhône (Southern France) on 13th March 2007.

Believing Mr. Helias' graphic, in 2005, 19 permanent of this sort of pictorial cancellations and 76 temporary ones were in use in France. Comparing in 1991 to, respectively, 397 permanent and 605 temporary.

I hope that this disappearance will be only momentaneous, time for La Poste to find some greed in illustrating cancellations.