Machin jewelry

In issue 172 of Royal Mail catalog Preview, are proposed objects of collection for fans of the Machin series :
* pin badge in silver reproducing the First class stamp (22,95 pounds sterling, circa 33 € or 46 USD) ;
* commemorative medal in silver, diameter 6 cm (£89,95) ;
* a document containing folders about Arnold Machin's arts and about the palette of the stamp series, plus a Machin stamp in silver (£48) ;
* and a medal first day cover of the Arnold Machin stamp. The medal's faces represent the famous effigy and a sculpted portrait of Arnold by his deceased son Francis (£14,50).

Fortunate amateur will be happy. I think it's more elegant than the Marianne des Français mug La Poste proposed in January 2005.

Promoting the philatelic program of France

For many years, Phil@poste (formerly the National Service for Postal Stamps) has been distributing semestrial flyers to announce next issues and their first day sellings.

The front page is the reproduction of one of the stamp to come.

Clients of Phil@poste received them regularly. The others can find them at the philatelic post offices (one per département) or during first day happenings.



This one is the 2007 second semester flyer illustrated by the next stamp about the space exploration. The first day will happen this 4 October, 50 years after Spoutnik 1 reached Earth orbit.

Postage stamp as an object of propaganda : 0,85 € on a light letter (0-20 gramms) can show the world the engines of the European Space Agency.

Looney Tunes

Since I was imitating Tweety Bird's catch-phrase last day, here are two stamps of the USPS series about the Looney Tunes characters, anthropomorphic animals created by the Warner Bros. during the 1930's and the 1940's.

Disappointed

A little free speech text today :

The 2008 edition of the first tome (stamps of France) of the Yvert et Tellier catalogue is published this autumn ! And, when you read September issue of L'Écho de la timbrologie magazine, you know it ! Its new cover designed by French artist Marc Taraskoff is the event of the season ! Aude Ben-Moha writes it : this limited edition cover marks the "revival" of the French philately. Plus, she reminds you : buy this limited cover catalogue and you win this painting on a free minisheet ! Yeah !

The illustrator, Marc Taraskoff, is summoned for a commercial two-page interview about this cover, even if he admits that "I am neither a philatelist, nor a collector". But he can judge the content of Y&T catalogue : "it's quite not a harmless book. It's a reference, a true bible."

Conclusion : the content is precious to all collectors. So, let's go to page 86 and read this catalogue critic. The cover, the promotion of an annex mini-book about engraving and recess-printing written by Mrs. Ben-Moha, and which countries are in the others tomes published this month are all the topic of this critic. Nothing about the content and its evolution. :))

I forget the ultimate detail, in the eye of the new French philatelic collector, the one who collects catalogue covers and minisheets reproducing catalogue covers : "The latter [tome 1bis and following] keep their old red cover."


If you want to know some tiny bits of serious informations (yes, as commercial as the above), go read page 15 of Timbres magazine and the answers of the main manager of Y&T, Benoît Gervais, about his catalogue, his covers and his firm. About the tome 1 content, he thinks it became a "semi-specialized" catalogue that give the readers what they have been asking : "more photographs, more iconographic research [? from the redactor of this post], more informations".

Personally, I will wait November and the Autumn Show in Paris to give an eye to this catalogue : will he finally give as much - even more - datas about the stamps' story and career than Dallay.

For the stamps from un-French-related countries, and even if these books were not often in my hands, I suggest you compare Y&T content with Michel, Scott and Stanley Gibbons catalogues. The financial and linguistic effort can be very producive.


4 october 2007 :
If you want to see the content of the Dallay catalogues (France and French philatelic "countries"), you can watch on TV timbres the interview of their authors, Luc Dartois et Jean-Bernard Pillet, by Timbres magazine's journalist Michel Melot.

I taut I tou a putty head in Fiji

One of Parisian weekly stamp market, Carré Marigny, near the Champs-Élysées, is selling modern registered letters from British colonies. They were sent to postal boxes and banks in the Channel Islands.

One of those confort myself in my Machin mania :

Sent at Lautoka, a town in Fiji islands, in 1979, it bears three stamps. On them, the effigy of Queen Elizabeth II... that looks like the Machin stamp series of the United Kingdom. Unless I'm beginning to see this head every where ?

Independent since 1970, Fiji had been a monarchy under the queen of England rule until 1987. This year, two military coups d'État were organized against the alleged power of Indian-Fijians versus the Melaniasian-Fijians.

Chalon head, Elizabeth age

The Chalon head are series of British colonial stamps during the 19th century. The name came from the painter whose portrait of Queen Victoria was re-interpreted into stamps : Alfred Edward Chalon.

New Zealand was among these colonies. Its 1855 Chalon heads were the very first stamps of this country. And that's what this 1955 stamp commémorated :



Same crown made under George IV's reign (and visible on the Penny Black and the Machin series), same youth, but different queen : Elizabeth II replaced her ancestor.

British first class is not Europe first class

I presented what Royal Mail put on unsufficient franked postcard. But, what can it do when the card is not illustrated ?

The éditions Verdier is a French publisher. Inside their books, the reader find a card with a quizz : who are you ? what did you buy ? where ? etc.

The problem of postage due is indicated by a big cancellation beginning with the word "DELAYED" : certainly a message explaining why Royal Mail did not hurry to treat this card for three days.

Accident on a pictorial cancellation in Lattes

Back to pictorial cancellations of Lattes, in Southern France, and this day in November 1999, when a letter has got a little accident when it passed through the mechanical chicane.



Note : we all have witnessed the permanent lack of time of our contemporary fellows (me included). I have watched their ignorance about postal tarriffs too. The first with the latter is a good price for the postal administration in France : the wrong idea is that two permanent red stamps are suffisant for a big letter, too heavy for a lone 20-gram red stamp.

In 1999, the red permanent stamp costs 3 francs, against 4,50 francs for a 20 to 50 gram letter. The consumer who posted the letter above lost 1,50 francs.

Since the 1st October 2006, the lost has been lighter : 0,86 - 2 x 0,54 = 0,22 € (soit 1,44 franc).

Senegal stamp againt Apartheid

It suffered inside a dealer's box full of stamps of the world, but it recalls that postage stamps are political messenger of a country.


The international communauty's arm stops the Apartheid to continue the oppression against black peoples in South Africa (the blood on the right). And Nelson Mandela in the fighting leadership figure while he had been imprisoned for 24 years when this stamp was issued.

Intrusive bar-code

To send a postcard and imagine the destinator profit a beutiful view of your journey, is some time more a matter of faith than simple confidence in the postal service. I wrote about the Royal Mail's radical picturesque sticker to make you understand your sender was cheap on rates.

The automatization of mail sorting brings me another example, on a card from the United States, thank to a Postcrossing exchange.


Prudent and respectuous of its buyers and the U.S. Postal Service, the publisher Penrod/Hiawatha of Michigan let a blank space at the bottom right. There, the room is large enough for any Postnet bar-code the USPS want to print. But, here, as you can see, it has remained blank.


Blank because, the USPS maculated the view of Mackinac Bridge with a sticker for its Postnet bar-code... The bridge connects the two peninsulas forming the State of Michigan.

I ask : can not anyone invent a machine whose postal users are intelligent enough to cancel and print bar-code on the same side ?