Week #2016.49 on SébPhilatélie

As Sébastien is quite hibernating because he cannot be outside in the Mediterranean sunshine during the working days, he's sleepy, playing video games, reading fantasy and sci-fi comics, when he should be writing on the blog.

German personalised minisheet of Super Mario Christmas stamps (PlayNation.de).

Hopefully Deutsche Post succeeded to catch his attention yesterday evening.

Monday 5 December: 5th Indian demonetisation follow up article.

Started on Monday and to be closed tonight an article on the fifth week after the Indian Prime Minister abruptly demonetised the two bigger banknotes of the country.

As a summary: it looks now like a race between the patience of Indians to get enough notes for their daily expenses and the Reserve Bank of India's printing plants and the Government's initiatives to encourage one billion consumers used digital means of payment.

A new test is currently on with a three day week end: no bank counters opened from last Friday evening until next Tuesday morning because of a muslim festival. Let's check the mood in the lines waiting in front of banks and ATMs in two days.

Friday 9 December: An introduction on the 1920 Allegory issue of Czechoslovakia.

During a 5pm conference on Thurday 8 at the Royal Philatelic Society London, Yvonne Wheatley presented a study of the four design Allegory series of Czechoslovakia, the second in this country's history after the declaration of independence in October 1918.

Cover of the souvenir-booklet, available as a pdf file at the RPSL website.

She explained how difficult was the initial choice: two competitions were necessary. The first provided designs that could not be stamp downsized... The second awarded Brunner's Chain Breaker dismissed for too much modernity...

Finally necessity prevailed and early 1920 the minister of Post looked back on Brunner's project and ordered two others to Benda (The Dove) and Obrovský (Agriculture and Science). Alfons Mucha's Hussite Priest was added to complete the set.

The rest of the conference is a traditional philatelic study, quite interesting for amateurs of types, oddities and varieties as the printer was a private one, absolutely not specialised in stamps at first, and of some use on covers.

Saturday 10 December: Super Mario on personalised print it yourself German minisheet.

For Christmas 2016 the German postal operator and the Japanese video game company Nintendo joined force to catch the general public and children's attention.

Click, slide, create your own minisheet (Post Individuell, Deutsche Post).

Post Individuell, Deutsche Post's personalised stamp service, is proposing for a month a personalised stamps picturing the four heroes of the Super Mario franchise video games. You can modify everything: the postage rate need (from nationwide postcard to international 1 Kg non standard letter, the background color of the sheet (red, green), the four stamp background (red, green, white) and which character you wish on every stamp.

Service is quite expensive for postcard and standard letter rates: 3.49 euro the personalisation to add to the chosen rates.