The thirty euros of September

By multiplying the booklets, the completist collector of France is seeing the total amount going through the roof. But, he must not complain, he was warned: the Charter let Phil@poste, the French philatelic service, free to do whatever it wants with the benediction of the supposed representatives of federated collectors.


The wait for "stamps of the State" will last until the end of the month. Phil@poste dedicates these stamps for collectors, considered one day a faithful and researched clientship, and a burden to be rid of the other. On 21 Septembre, Eugène Vaillé will be stamped: a French postal librarian, archivist, historian and the founding curator of the postal museum of France. You have to know that because the stamp by André Lavergne is quite anonymous (a portrait and the front wall of the first museum). On 28, the abbay of Royaumont will be depicted by Line Filhon.


From a very long band of paper, the Gardens of France series became rectangular and will become album-friendly for once :p

Even if I found the Jardins des plantes of Paris too green under Gilles Bosquet's bruches while I remembered something as dusty as the Garden of Luxembourg. At least, it will compensate the so-RED booklet of last Spring.


Funfair on a six stamp minisheet by Cécile Millet, why not? First day in the Jardin d'Acclimatation is to attract families, we already know.


Let come the booklets.

Perhaps in all good movie theater on 30 September, after the post offices on the 21st, the Smile booklet with funny drawings with the Little Nicolas character. Youth literature by René Goscinny (yes, Astérix's father) ponctuated with sketches by Sempé. Stamps sold in theater, that will be as fun as funfair stamps first day in a actual funfair...

Corinne Salvi is invited to produce fourteen Invitation stamps, if you like her illustrating style.

Let's remark for both these booklets that the six tiny stamps are designed according their size compared to the eight larger.


Great change for the more than fifty year old philatelic institution of France. The Red Cross issue became a five stamp minisheet (look like a booklet to me). Five different ones for the one hundred and fifty years of the non governmental organisation founded by Henri Dunant. Four historical by Marc Taraskoff and a Rorschach figure hidden inside an artwork by Georges Braque (supposedly doves).

Why the change? Because of the money change I think:
-> ten stamps = 5.60 euros + the gift to the Red Cross = you must break a big tenner.
-> five stamps = 2.80 euros + the gist = you give a little fiver.

If Phil@poste is trying to discreetly relaunch this issue and bust the Red Cross gifts, that is good. Moreover, the issue is mobing two months earlier to avoid the competition of the giftfree Best Wishes booklet.

But this issue is posing me (and some readers who wrote to me) a problem: can a buyer with a Phil@poste bills ask for the regular reduction of income tax for caritative gifts? I will try to have some intels soon.


So, near thirty euros this month, including two euros for the Red Cross. And there are the Paris Autumn Show's issues to come...