1783. 🇨🇾 Cyprus Christmas Stamps.

🇨🇾 Cyprus Post will issue a set of 3 Christmas stamps on 19 November 2020. Two of them depict delightful-looking cakes and pastries as Christmas decorations and the third has a religious subject and shows The Nativity of Christ as it appears on a fresco dating back to the end of the 12th century located in the Christ’s Antifonitos Church in Kalograia. Rating:- ****.

 🇸🇭 In Blog 1755 I reported that the postal service of Tristan Da Cunha was to issue a 16 stamp new definitive set depicting modern mailships on 9 November 2020 but subsequently in Blog 1758 reported that the issue had been delayed because of the wish to add a 17th stamp to the set in order to depict the MFV Geo Searcher which had been lost recently when it hit rocks off Gough Island. The ship is now featured on a new £3 value and the revised date of issue will be 14 December 2020.

🇳🇿 In Blog 1767 I mentioned the set of New Zealand Post Chinese new year stamps due for issue on 2 December 2020. Details of the issue have now been published on the New Zealand Post internet site and these reveal that the issue will also include a miniature sheet with very expensive varieties of it being sold  in frames, strictly for the wealthy and the gullible.

  As well as the standard miniature sheet (sold for $11.60) there will also be limited editions of the item printed in “24 carat 99.9 gold foil”, “embossed and etched with micro-fine detail” and sold in “an individually numbered frame” (“only 66 produced” - price $560). For one of these gold foil miniature sheets sold in an unnumbered perspex display stand the price falls precipitously to the trivial sum of $188. The gold foil miniature sheet will also be sold with the 4 stamps contained in it being printed in “vibrant colour” and sold in a perspex stand at $288 but certain of the sheets are numbered and those which have “lucky numbers” printed on them (numbers 11, 16, 18, 2, 23, 28, 3, 28, 6, 66, 8 and 9), “beautifully framed”, are to be sold for $1888 (for that amount of money I should want my gold foil stamps to be mounted in a solid gold frame).