The week #2015.45 on SébPhilatélie

Let's try to revive my philatelic blog in English by summarizing the main articles of the week on his French counterpart.

Tuesday, November 3rd: postal game night with The Legend of Zelda, a series of Nintendo video games in which the player receives a huge lot of mail since The Wind Waker.

The mail sorting center inside the Island Post Office in The Wind Waker (screen capture of the game by zeldawiki.org).

Because I began playing Twilight Princess these past three weeks, I rediscover the running postman in his bunny underwear... And it reminds me of the mini-game of the previous episode, pictured above: for ruppees and a piece of heart, you can become a postman!

Link and his horse Epona on one of the French 2005 minisheet Heroes of video game (Phil-Ouest.com, THE database to know on French stamps and their creators).

And I was still in philately thanks to this nice low value youth stamp of France. Mario was on the other side at thirty three cents.

Friday, November 6th: revelation from the French philatelic service - Phil@poste -  for 2016.

At the Paris Autumn Stamp Show, Phil@poste's Director Gilles Livchitz presented all the projects of his service to help philately and not just print and sell a huge amount of stamps and souvenirs.

The three hundred post office that will receive a philatelic counter (from the press pdf).

 What of interest for foreign collectors? Philatelic counters are coming back after having being destroyed completely... Three hundred post offices will be affected, where Phil@poste's clients are. Now we have a sort of French philately map.

Or a map of the French stamps subscribers who refused to go full-mail and want to continue going to the post office to get their stamps.

British special cancellation collectors will recognize this item (from the press pdf). 

Don't be surprised if the next first day cover of France arrived enclosed in a paper envelope. Finally, Phil@poste has heard years of collectors' complaints about special cancelled mail being recancelled at the sorting centers. Each envelope will cost fifteen cents.

In the French article, I imagined that an unlucky employee was sent to Assassin's Creed Syndicate's London to find about this easy solution.

Only mischief: the phi greek letter will survive 2015 and continue to disgrace the philatelic program of France...

Saturday November 7th: Belgium philatelic program for 2016 announced.

Picture by Lieve Blancquaert, to be issued on October 14th, 2016 (© bpost).

And bpost succeeded to catch a lot of French speaking web media attention, from the general ones to the religious and communautary oriented ones. The Belgian main postal operator (still majoritary owned by State), communicated on religious tolerance and acceptance with a symbolic stamp uniting a rabbi, an archbishop and an imam.

If you browse the four pdf files of the 2016 program (1, 2, 3 and 4), you'll be impressed by all the serious peoples celebrated from author Verhaeren to ten Belgian Nobel Prizes, a lot of local flowers and André Buzin's birds, the children of the Royal Family, and finally comics character (anniversary of Tintin magazine).

A very nice simple program.

Sunday November 8th: Stephen Colbert entertained TV viewers with banknote collecting.

Colbert proposed you a huge offer for a rare eyepatch (pen inked) Washington bill for only one thousand bucks! (youTube - CBS)

In his Tuesday November 3rd show, U.S. humorist Stephen Colbert entertained viewers of his Late Show on CBS with how one can get lost in the amount of intels when browsing the internet.

But he discovers a website that let people "get rich by collecting money"!

CoolSerialNumbers.com get free publicity and the public a lesson that the serial number of a banknote can improve his collecting value. Of course Colbert went quickly crazy by proposing his own bill collection on sale: don't miss it on youTube.

A cool way of warning the public on how some internet sellers can get their money with awful false collectable, especially the '"Eyepatch Washington" that will remind philatelists on fraudulent cancels and overprints.

A cool week on the leisure side.