Saturday 19 July 2014

Utterly Philately.



Yesterday I received a parcel; it was covered with 17 different stamps.

15 of the stamps were valued at €2.80, and 2 at €3.00. The total cost of the postage being €48.00.

Each stamp was different, and only one (of Fernandel) was stuck on upside-down.

Most of the stamps dated from 1994, with one or two from 1995 and 1998.

There are pictures of Coluche, Josephine Baker, and Yves Montand; plus there are birds, flowers, and even Vikings.

One can only assume that the sender had become disillusioned with stamp collecting, and decided to use them for their originally intended purpose.

How very strange! 



17 comments:

  1. It is amazing.Can the sender use old stamps?
    I have a nice collection of stamps which I am keeping for the grandkids.May be some day some kid will collect stamps again.(when the war will end i shall not be the first to comment:)

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  2. Strange indeed. And I also wondered if the sender could use old stamps. Are you going to save them ? Thanks for visiting my blog on full moon! Have a great day. Jo

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    Replies
    1. The stamps were all unused collectors stamps. It was as if he'd just got bored with them.

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  3. What a fabulous collection - well worth saving I would have thought - if only for their novelty value.

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  4. I have a philatelist friend. He buys huge boxes of old stamps at auction - a hundredweight at a time. Unremarkable and unused native stamps have face value in their own country. It's entirely legal to use unfranked/unused out of print stamps in the country of origin. All my friend's letters/parcels look like yours :-)
    In the UK you can even use stamps with a 1/2p denomination (even though we haven't had the 1/2p for years) provided the total value of the stamps equals or exceeds the actual cost of postage.
    If you send a lot of mail it's a clever way to go about it. Like buying currency cheaply. The value of usable stamps usually far exceeds what he paid for them.

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    Replies
    1. I suppose that's one way of looking at it, but wouldn't there also be some capital depreciation?

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  5. Certainly brightens the post..

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  6. Hope what was inside the parcel was exciting - birthday pressie perhaps?

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    Replies
    1. Yes, from my son in Oz (but posted in France). It's a Blu-ray/DVD/CD etc player. A much needed prezzie.

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  7. You could revert to childhood and start collecting stamps.

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    Replies
    1. I shall keep them for the boys. As they were stuck onto plastic, they come away very easily.

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  8. When mother passed away in 1997, my parents' stamp collection was among the things to sort through. All the stamps from the thirties on they saved, for "the value, some day." The value of precious little was a bit, but the value of most was face value. "Might as well use them for postage," the appraiser said, and so we did.

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    Replies
    1. Maybe this person had just had his collection appraised too.

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  9. I have a friend in the UK, and we send each other parcels once in awhile. Once when her daughter was quite small, i had a box of things to send over and wanted to use all different kinds of stamps just for fun. The postmaster waited on me and was thrilled with my request. It was a slow day for him, and we spent a bit of time looking through the different stamps he had.

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  10. or your sender is like me, and finds stray stamps in the dreck at the back of the desk drawer.

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