Thursday, March 26, 2009

264 new stamps of France!

Through its Philinfo bulletin, Phil@poste, the French philatelic service, is provoking rumors of revolt on fr.rec.philatelie: two hundreds and sixty four different postage stamps are to be issued on 27 April 2009!!!

It is la France comme j'aime, [the France like I like it], the series replacing Portraits de régions, a twice a year ten stamp booklet issue on traditional customs and places of France (example). Already, these former series received many negative feedbacks: just agency's photographs put on gummed paper, no possibility to buy each stamp separately, many first day cancels, etc.

The new series will blow everything on its way :)


Twenty-four sheets of ten different stamps illustrated with photographs about the twenty-two Metropolitan regions, Paris and the French Antilles (Guadeloupe and Martinique, surely Guyane and Réunion will be present on the second episode). Ten stamps for the first rate prioritary letter to France and oversea territories up to 20 grams = 0.56 euro.

Price: 7.90 euro the sheet... 7.90 - 5.60 = 2.30 euro too much. But, you have a nice illustrated cardboard.

Total: 7.90 x 24 = 189.60 euros (256 US dollars) including 55.20 euro (74 dollars) with no postal utility. Happy will be the first-dayers who need many stamps for their cancellations: Phil@poste will give them a discount of twenty euros for each 24 different sheets bought. Enough to catch the sixty different first day cancellations.

Don't forget the two adhesive twelve-stamp booklet about the flora of our beautiful Metropolitan regions (one for North, one for South). But, for these, you just have to pay the postage: 6.72 each.


Do not get on your nerves. Summarize quietly.

1. We are in a free commerce country: you sell at the price you want, you buy what you want the price you want.

2. In France, during the reign of Nicolas, you have to play under the rules of the sacred states of the kingdom. All these stamps are not to be collected, f****** h****. How many time will we have to repeat you that ! Hem... quietly, I said :D

The two adhesive booklets are for the beutiful franking by the plebs (second category) and the large quantity of sheets sold higher than the face value, they are "stamps with value added" (timbres à valeur ajoutée, third category).

No, Mister Borrey, no need to thank me to remind again to mad collectors the wise decisions came, thank to fine wines, to the philatelic deputies facing collectors' doléances.

Conclusion, value for collection needed on 27 April : 0 euro 0 cent. There, you see that the States General of Philatelie, they are working :)


I stop smiling now. Phil@poste must find money. Collectors and first-dayers want to give them some... Do you often refuse money?

Then, the regional spirit is present in the non collectors' minds. Is Phil@poste wrong to propose them a franking products that is meeting their regionalist needs? No, it is a firm prospecting new clients.

In Languedoc-Roussillon, the great debates on the Septimany name for the region, the survival of shows in occitan without any subtitles in French on France 3 Sud television channel and the useless street marks in dead local language prove this point even if the Frenchs do live anymore like they are thinking their ancestors did.

Phil@poste want to turn these feelings into money. That's all.

We have to wait now to see if my non collector fellowmen and women can buy ten stamps 2.30 euro more expensive than usual, and keep them as souvenir hoping to resale them with a increase value in some ye





[Southern French readers regrouping]

...

té, l'est passé où l'autre fada ? [yé, his where this donkey]

hé, connaud ! ramène-tes miches [hé, dumby! bring your back here]

...

[the author returns :]
Sorry for the final letters of the sentence, I was out to die laughing.

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