Sunday, February 13, 2011

Zambia, Netherlands, The Vatican from Belgium and Thunderbirds

Hello again, glad you dropped by. Today I have a few cards that arrived either Friday or Thursday. These cards are from Zambia, Netherlands, Belgium and Great Britain. All cards except the Zambia card are from Postcrossers. Let's get to them.

First up is Bruce's card from Zambia. Bruce has been good enough to send me cards from a number of places recently , along with a souvenir sheet of stamps from South Africa. Bruce sent his card from Livingstone, a city of approximately 100,000 in the south part of the country. The card shows us a group of elephants at dusk. Now the stamps- let me start by saying both are overprints for a new value. The bird stamp on the left was issued in 2007. The The other stamp, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the UNO is an overprint of a stamp that was issued in 1995. I'm not sure if the stamp on the card was actually issued that year or not.

My next card is from Barendrecht, a small town, south of Rotterdam. On the card we can see a water tower that was built in 1912, but is now only used for weddings. And the three stamps used, well I couldn't find any information on then at all.

One would think the next card is from The Vatican or at least Italy, but no, it's from Belgium. Jo , who recently visited The Vatican and Rome, sent this card, when he got back home in Belgium. I guess I don't have to write anything about St. Peter's Square, now do I ? The large stamp on the left was issued in 1993 and celebrates Stamp Day. The other two stamps are from a multi-sheet of 20 different values celebrating the 20th century.

Today's final card is from London. It is a card showing the miniature sheet of 4 stamps that Royal Mail issued on 11 January 2011 for The Thunderbirds and the Genius of Gerry Anderson. My card doesn't have either of the Thunderbird stamps but it does have something a little different, at least for me. It has my first Post and Go stamp from Britain. I believe Machin Head Post and Go stamps have been on the go since 2008 but this is my first. I understand that other versions of these labels have been issued in September of 2010 and again recently in January of 2011. Both issues depict birds and are quite nice looking sets. Any and all would be welcome in my collection. Staying with this theme a little longer- I have recently read that Royal Mail is not the only entity providing valid postage stamps in Great Britain. UniversalMail is the producer of scenic generic postage stamps in the UK. UniversalMail produces postcard stamps for retailers to sell to international tourists only. The stamps cannot be used for delivery of mail in the UK.
The stamps are larger than Royal Mail's definitve stamps and picture local landmarks. I see they have issued stamps themed for Scotland, England, London, Northern Ireland and Wales. I would love to receive a postcard with one of these stamps on it. Come on all you British readers , how about it ?

I think that is the update for this time. Thanks to Bruce, Wim, Jo and Anne for their postcards. See you tomorrow for a little something unusual. Take care. Comments ?

2 comments:

Anu said...

I have one of these UniversalMail stamps still available. It shows the Ironbridge Gorge, which is also a Unesco site. Please let me know if you would be interested in a swap.

3.1 said...

Just to give you more info about the Post and Go stamps: The one I used for your card is issued and printed with a Post and Go machine – they've slowly been introduced to Post Offices across the UK as means of obtaining stamps and some postal services without having the need to queue up to see the cashier. They're quite useful as I can basically order as many or as few stamps as I want there and then and it saves me queuing if the post office is busy. In London, there still aren't many of these Post and Go machines around – you tend to find them more in Central London and the larger post offices in the suburbs that are nearer sorting hubs (my nearest post office with a Post and Go machine is in Harrow, which is a good few miles away from where I live in Ruislip).