New issues -
🇬🇧 Royal Mail -
5 September 2023 - 65th anniversary of the first publication of a Paddington Bear book - 6 stamps (3 se-tenant pairs) and 1 miniature sheet containing 4 different stamps. Rating:- **.
Poor quality illustrations but they give an idea of the rather trivial and banal nature of this issue. Better quality illustrations will be shown when available.
🇲🇾 Pos Malaysia -
22 August 2023 - Centenary of the Penang Hill funicular railway - 3 stamps and 1 miniature sheet containing a single stamp. Lithographed. Rating:- *****.
It concerns me that Royal Mail has moved away from celebrating anniversaries which are multiples of 50 (or even 25) years.
ReplyDeleteThey are getting in while stamps are still being issued. Also this coincides with the opening in London at some time this autumn of THE PADDINGTON EXPERIENCE in London (websites don't tell you much more at present).
DeleteJust a wild prediction:
DeleteThe 200th anniversary of the postage stamp in 2040 will be Royal Mail's last commemorative stamp issue.
After that only a few King William definitives just to keep some sort of tradition alive.
WK - I honestly believe that RM will not exist in 17 years time and that no one, except for a few antiquarians-philatelists, will have any idea of what postage stamps were for.
DeleteNordic, yes I agree. Australia Post is just as bad. Still they only issue three or four stamps at a time, and usually at the domestic rate. The irony though is the FIFA Women's World Cup is given a single (despite breaking all records), while Peacock Spiders get three stamps (there's no justification for this issue except that except for one species all peacock spiders are found in Australia).
DeleteStewie1980 it's very possible. Look at Iceland were the only new issue in years is one to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the first Icelandic stamps.
DeleteMost extortative, though, is having multiple stamps for each value - never less than two per, these days.
ReplyDelete