Theme : Tintin (Kuifje) 07a (duo stamps)

Collectors of Tintin stamps will be very interested in this issue,
yet, it's not really a Tintin-stamp...

It's a so-called 'personal' stamp, issued by belgian postal authorities.
This is a weird, but logically solved solution to 'personal stamps' that are appearing more and more these days.

First of all, there are no so-called 'personal stamps' in Belgium.
At least there are personal lables, additional to 'official stamps'.

Belgium made a smart move not to start issuing tons of 'private' issues that will never appear in catalogues.
They simplye made a neutral stamp and attatched a label to it that can be used as a 'personal stamp'.
The only official stamp is the white and red stamp on the right hand side.
The second part, is a personal label that can be ordered through the website of the belgian post.

5 duo stamps : Tintin airplane

back of the set

But now comes the tricky part ...
Anyone can order 'personal' labels with the real stamp attatched to it.
Except, postal services have emitted "duo" stamps on their own as well.
These are exactly the same as the 'personal stamps' ; i.e. offical stamp with personal label.

The 'officially' issued 'personal stamps' are emitted for special occasions such as weddings, birth, new year, ...
or for famous belgian comic book characters, like Tintin.

But only the white-red stamp is a real stamp.
Question is now, is this a set of 5 stamps now? or is this 5 similar stamps with 5 different labels?

Fact is, theme collectors, and collectors of belgian stamps, want those 5 'duo-stamps' for their collection, but forget that they are paying 10 times the price of 1 stamp and they receive 5 identical catalogised stamps.

to be continued...