Week #2016.12 on SébPhilatélie

Tuesday 22th March: Difficult times in our world.
Thoughts after the too many jihadist attacks in Europe, the Middle East and, let's not forget, the North and Western parts of the African continent. Discovering all these countries and populations through postage stamps could help remind we are all in this together.

Shrimp fishing on horseback, one of UNESCO's intagible cultural heritage, is practised in Oostduinkerke, Belgium (stamp issued June 2015 by bpost).

One of the Serval stamps of Mali, printed by French plant Phil@poste Boulazac, issued 2014 (colnect and UPU's WNS), an educative thank to the Allies who came to help Mali in 2013.

Saturday 26th March: Being offered a magazine... a trap to whom?
The same day the April issue of Timbres magazine was published, competitor-by-order-only L'Écho de la timbrologie sent me its own April issue free...

Created 1887, the French monthly was retrieved by philatelist printer Théodule Tellier in 1990 as he was managing the Yvert plant, waiting for the son, Louis Yvert, to be ready. Both men were the founder of the philatelic family firm Yvert and catalogue Yvert et Tellier.

But, since a decade now, L'Écho has been no more available at newsstands: yearly subscription and individual issue order (printed or digital) are only available online... The question was then, and still now: how do you find new readers? For example me who didnot resubscribe late 2008 because reading it was too quick.

Eight years later, it's still not my cup of tea even if some collectors can find it interesting: only four articles, and a lot of news about new issues of France, of the associations and the Federation.

To me, nothing compare to Timbres magazine with many articles, in which I find what I want and lots of thing to discover. Bonus in April: after an undecided new formula last September (the principles are different from the results, and I love the results), the editor in chief announces a complete renovation for September 2016, a revolution even, like the zero issue of ancestor Timbroscopie in 1984 who shook the leaders of the time: Le Monde des philatélistes, that finally merged 2000 with its competitor to form Timbres magazine, and L'Écho.

Thank you, L'Écho, but no, thanks. Waiting April 15th the new exceptional issue of Timbres magazine on the French presence in the world through stamps (after the first one), philately and postal history. And now for the renovated magazine in September.