Stamps

These are a few favourites from my stamp collection. Stamps are cool because they're small and detailed. They contain a lot of history, beauty, and sorrow. I learned a lot about the world through its postage stamps.

The image at the top changes every time I log in to this account. That's how you can tell I'm still alive. (For the curious, this is the script that does the changeroo.) To see all the images, you'll just have to keep coming, I'm afraid. But I will put a few here just so I can talk about them a bit.

Faves

In Czech, and in Danish, the word for kite is the same as that for dragon, so it's interesting to see the constellation of Draco depicted as a kite. (This isn't a real stamp, it turns out, just a Christmas seal type thing.)

As if the parallelogram wasn't enough, I've never seen perforation used as part of the stamp design in this way anywhere else.

[Deutsches Reich - 2 Millionen (overprint)]

This is from Germany between the wars. Inflation got so bad at one point that they didn't even print the denomination on the stamp anymore; they just overprinted it before sending.

This was from the brief period when Bohemia was a protectorate of the German Reich.

Not only was Vermeer a fabulous painter, but one of his descendents sends me neat stamps from time to time!

These ones just turned out to be more fun than usual to identify. If you can figure out where they're all from, I'll send you a stamp.

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Created: 3. March, 2002.
Last time I changed this date: 2. December, 2004.