.New Issues
🇫🇷 La Poste (postal service of France)
19 September 2022 - 70 Years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. In a gracious gesture the postal service of France issued a commemorative sheet of 4 different self-adhesive stamps (for use on international mail) on the date the French President was present at her funeral in Westminster Abbey to honour Her Late Majesty and commemorate her reign. This is a remarkable issue and to me quite unexpected and reflects the high regard in which the late Queen was held not just in Britain and The Commonwealth but in the rest of the world. Rating:- *****.
The item appears to be sold in a pack which includes text detailing the late Queen’s life.
As detailed in Blog 172 there was a time just before the fall of France to the German invasion in 1940 when Britain and France were close to becoming a single state and a joint Empire and the design of a postage stamp depicting King George VI with the then French President was being prepared as the first joint stamp of the new Franco-British state. A second occasion when the two countries were close to becoming one was at the time of the Suez Crisis in 1956 but again the moment passed and unity was never achieved.
1994 to commemorate the opening of the Channel Tunnel and a single Royal Mail stamp released in 2012 as part of a miniature sheet noting important events during the period of the House of Windsor also highlighted the same event.
The French stamps are part of La Poster's personalised stamp range. They are similar to the stamps Australia Post sells in packets of 12 with Disney etc designs on them. While released by the post office, they are not considered to be part of the official programme.
ReplyDeleteThe French stamps are "personalized" stamps. Just extra money making for the French Post, like the Smilers sheets are for Royal Mail.
ReplyDeleteWK - as you both say - these personalised issues are in a format whereby the issuing postal service produces and sells them but claims they are not part of their stamp issuing programmes. Well I believe that if they issue them and they are valid for postage then clearly they are part of their stamp issuing programme no matter how they dress them up or whatever label they give them - they are valid postage stamps issued by those postal services and they can not pretend otherwise. Postal services across the world use this label of personalised stamps as a way of making it look as though their stamp issuing programmes are not as excessive as they really are. We are not duped by them.
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