News — Philatelic Friday

"The Wedding" has been inescapable so I call uncle and offer a tip of the hat to the Royals with a survey of the Queen from my box of stamps.

This classic image was created by Arnold Machin in 1967 and has been featured on over 200 billion stamps! It is the main definitive stamp series in the UK and has lasted over 40 years. The stark design is fittingly graceful, but my favorite aspect is the panoply of colors.

1980s? Great Britain

I also like the colors of these stamps from Hong Kong (it was hard to reproduce, but that orange is almost fluorescent). The design is a little busy, but the squiggly flourishes are a nice touch. Here's an idea of what the rest of the series looks like.

1982-86 Hong Kong

And this stamp from 1977 is pretty straight-forward (it's a photo taken by Warren Harrison to commemorate the Silver Anniversary of her Accession), but I've never seen a price change just printed on a stamp. They had a change in postal rates and for some reason decided it was easier to cross out the 10c instead of just issuing a new/make-up stamp? Not exactly a classy move.

1977, 1979 New Zealand

It's Earth Day so it seems appropriate to bring out the two conservation-themed stamps from the box. This stamp has a great look and bold colors (although mine is a little on the weathered side) and seems inspired by the conservation and alternative energy efforts stemming from the oil crisis earlier in the '70s.

1977 USA

And this one is from a set of four conservation stamps (Soil, Air, Water, Energy). I don't think soil conservation has really hit the mainstream consciousness here, so props to the Australians.

1985 Australia

Even though it's decades later, we're still facing the same challenges, if not worse. The USPS has just introduced a new sheet of Go Green stamps. Let's hope these ideas take!

I'll have to say finding out this flying squirrel from my box was a GIANT flying squirrel (stamps aren't necessarily drawn to scale right?) certainly made it more intriguing, besides the fact that, hey, it's a flying squirrel! It looks like Petaurista Alborufus is found in China and Taiwan and moves around at night, but this stamp doesn't do justice to how cute it is. The stamp seems to be part of a series from 1971 (there's also a pangolin!) and can also be found among this collection of flying squirrel stamps.

1971 Taiwan

This week's stamp from my box celebrates the centennial of the discovery of nickel in Sudbury, Ontario in 1883. I was just drawn to it by the colors and lettering (including the foil printing, which it turns out is a representation of the metal). I didn't even notice the city skyline until I scanned it in, which added an extra layer to my appreciation of the design. I was able to find out more about the stamp on The Canadian Design Resource, which looks like a pretty awesome site documenting all sorts of Canadian design.

1983 Canada

This week's stamps from my box provided me with another chance to learn more about another country. It was hard finding information about these particular stamps besides from online sellers, but this page about the largest flower in the world gave me some insight about the series and Malaysian government. So Malaysia actually consists of 13 states and 3 federal territories and for these stamps, they released a main federal one and then 13 variations for each state, making for 14 different stamps for each of 7 flowers. That's a whole lot of stamps! I only have a few from Pulau Pinang, and then one from Perak, but you can see the different coat of arms. The flowers are pretty interesting too.

1979 (reissued 1983-6) Malaysia