Odd stamps : 09a hologram stamps

Time for some new odd stamps.
You see it often in banknotes and certificates, holograms are used as a security mark
Official software is secured with holograms, but in stamps it's not that common.

Holograms used in euro money

There are not many holographic stamps or stamps with a hologram.

Such a security mark is not really necessary for stamps and mostly the value of a stamp is too low to invest in such a marks.
The only reason for holograms on stamps, is to "show off", to have a "special issue"...
Briefly, to make collectors pay extra.
But it's a given fact, holograms are attractive.

A hologram is a word with greek roots : holograph : hólos (the whole) and graphein (to write, to draw).
So it's a way to write print a whole image.

What is a hologram in fact?
It's not easy to describe it in an easy way, but let's try.

When looking through a window, all waves coming from the window to the retina in your eye. The combination of those waves make us see a 3D image.
Using certain optical (and physical) techniques, a 'photograph' can be made of a certain moment in this cyclus of waves. The image itself is not 3D, but with the use of light (or laserlight) the 'idea' of waves can be reconstructed.
When waves comes from different directions, the 3D image becomes more realistic and 'deeper';
In a hologram, the natural light is reconstructed and gives us the 3D view again.
The larger the holgram is, the bettter the 3D effect and the 'deeper' the view becomes.

The Hungarian scientist Dennis Gabor discovered the basic idea for holograms in 1948, but it lastet till 1960 until the first hologram was made, by the Americas Upatnieks and Leith. Gabor received the Nobelprice for his discovery, in 1971.

So far the theory, now the stamps ...

First sheet is from Poland, a sheet with 2 stamps, one with a hologram of a butterfly.

Poland holographic butterfly

Poland detail hologram

Secondly Bhutan, a lot can be said about Bhutani stamps, but they have been a pioneer in emitting special stamps. This is a sheet to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Man' first step on the Moon.

Bhutan 2 hologram in one sheet

Bhutan detail hologram

There are more holographic stamps to follow

To be or not to be : CTO - The dangerous ones 05 c

The obvious way for stamps to become CTO, is a genuine stamp that gets cancelled by officials, companies or postal services, to prevent they get used, or sold.
That sounds very logic.
Some CTO stamps are printed with cancel at the same moment the stamp itself gets printed.

But can it be the other way around too?
Can a CTO cancelled stamp become a genuine, postally used stamp again?
"No" seems to be the only logic answer, unless you remove the cancellation of course.
I don't know if that is technically possible, maybe it is, but that's not my cup of tea.

So can a CTO stamp still become a postally used one....
Well to my surprise my Malaysian friend helped me to solve that mistery!

Let's show a picture of a sheet I posted earlier :

CTO cancelled sheet from Malaysia

Back of the sheet, showing it's CTO cancelled

The letter I got from my friend K.M.

detail of the cancel

Now let's have a closer look at this postally used cancel.
There are a awful lot of cancels for just one corner, don't you agree...

First I marked the real cancels (highlighted in red) with the cancellation date underlined  18.1.12

 

real cancels

 Secondly a large cancellation in the middle, showing a date somewhere in April

Original CTO cancel (older then the postally used one)

As far as I know, the 'used' sheet was clearly cancelled to mask the original cancellation.
My friend told me that was the only way to get me such a sheet, postally used.
But since this cancel was made on demand of my friend, it becomes again a CTO, or not?

Anyhow, I'm very lucky to have this special sheet now, and thankful for the effort he made to get me the sheet.

Currency Today : Kenya 02

More about Kenya.
I posted the coins before, and want to show some of the banknotes currently in use (2012).

In Kenya banknotes of 50, 100, 200, 500 and 1000 shilling are in use.
1000 Kenyan Shilling is at this moment more or less 12 USD / 9 EUR.

The design of the notes are mainly the same. On the front we see the face of Jomo Kenyatta.
Kenyatta was prime minister after the independency in 1963 and became the first president when Kenya became a republic in 1964. He remained president until his death in 1978. He is considered the founding father of Kenya.
Many schools, hospitals, two universities, numerous streets and even the national airport is named after Jomo Kenyatta.
In the future however, his face might dissapear from Kenyan notes, as the new constitution decided that there should no longer be portraits of persons on any of Kenya's banknotes.

50 Kenyan Shilling (front)

50 Kenyan Shilling (back)

2 different printing dates

100 Kenyan Shilling (front)

100 Kenyan Shilling (back)

200 Kenyan Shilling (front)

200 Kenyan Shilling (back)

 to be continued ...

Currency Today : Kenya 01

To avoid too many subthemes, I'm planning some posts on coins and banknotes that are in use right now. As there are few places were only coins or only banknotes are in use (like Laos for example), I decided to combine both notes and coins under the title 'Currency Today'.
If my blog survives the end of the world in December 2012, and if it's still online in 2062, there might be some updates needed, but so far I'll keep the title, "Currency Today".

As the whole northern hemisphere is suffering from cold, there's no better place to go then the hot and wonderful Kenya.
Another reason why I'm posting Kenya currency now, is because a friend of mine, just came back from the eastern african country, with some fine coins and notes.

map of Africa - Kenya

Kenya is a country that is known by the Arabs since the 8th century, for the ivory and slave trade.
The Portuguese took over influence in the 16th century. The small island of Zanzibar near the Kenyan and Tanzanian border controlled much of the eastern side of Africa and because of it's strategic position on the way to India, also the German and British conquerors were mostly interested in Kenyan harbours.
Since Dec. 12, 1963 the country is independent and since 1964 it's a republic.

As a result of British influence, the currency is Cent and Shilling.

Kenya currency (front) - 2012

Kenya currency (back) - 2012

Most of the coins are bimetallic coins.

In use are 1, 5 10 and 20 shilling coins.
Less common is the 40 shilling bimetallic coin.
It's less common not only for it's face value of 40, but the first banknote in use is a 50 shilling note.

A closer look at the coin explains a lot.
Since the country became independent in 1963, the coin is actually a commemorative coin to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the independence.  No better reason to emit a 40 shilling coin of course.

40 shilling Keny - commemorative coin 2003

Maybe in 2013, a new 50 Shilling coin will be issued.


to be continued...

Odd stamps : 03b 3D stamps (moving)

While I'm waiting for a letter from Finland, to redirect to Asia, I received from a Malaysian friend... stamps from Finland...
How stampcollecting makes the world smaller...

But thanks to this letterswaps, I can present you today something special.
It's been a long time since I posted some 3D items, but in this post I can spoil you all with amazing 3D stamps.
Even more... this time the whole sheet is 3D and moving.

The first item is not from Finland, but from North Korea.
It might not be the most popular country for stamp collectors, but the following sheet is really worth looking at, and an amazing asset for collectors of odd stamps, theme collectors (animals)

North Korea full 3D sheet

3D stamp from sheet (60x24mm)

And as second 3D sheet, the post I just got from my Malaysian friend.
A large 3D sheet on wintersports in Finland.

It's not easy to scan 3D stamps or sheets and show the effect of the 3D.

full 3D sheet Finland (225x114 mm)

The stamp in the top right corner is the most interesting.
A snowboarder is jumping from above the stamp, flies diagonally trough the stamp,
goes to the middle of the sheet and lands in the snow, from there he dissapears downwards.

detail 3D sheet Finland

I added a line to show the movement of the snowboarder.
You can see the snowboarder clearly in the stamp, and slightly further on the sheet.

The other stamps are moving skiers.

3D Finland (detail)

Truly an amazing sheet, issued January 24, 2008 by the Finnish Post.

Odd stamps : 06 b Stamps on cotton / silk

In this topic, I showed earlier some french stamps printed on cotton.
This new item is similar and yet it's not.
It's printed on cotton also, as that is why I post it under this title, but it doesn't feel the same as the french ones.

The french stamps feel actually like a soft paper, almost like a paper tissue.
My new item for today, is really a 'thick' stamp (+/- 1 mm).
It doesn't feel as a stamp at all actually.
As I used to be a boyscouts long time ago, every year we got cotton labels to sew on our uniforms.
So we showed off how many years we were in scouting already, and each label reminded us of the theme the national scouting movement was working on that specific year.

In a way the stamp could be used in a similar way.
Not for boy scouts, but for football players.
This brazilian stamp shows a football player, and is issued to commemorate the centenary of the 'Corinthians'.

front side of the 'stamp'

back side of the auto adhesive stamp

It was issued in 2010, and it was hard to get a copy.
It's MNH, and i doubt if there are many 'postally used' copies.
But I would be mostly interested in such a used stamp.

Theme : Zodiac signs 09

I think everyone who collects stamps, knows the feeling of having too many big or smal boxes, books, binders, ... with several stamps of which you don't konw right away what to do with them.
I have plenty of those boxes and folders at home, that's a fact.

Every time you reorganise your stuff, those things move to another place, and "one day" you'll find a place to store them.
Putting such a stack of pages from one shelf to another one, made me discover a sheet that I had since a long time.

Big was my surprise that I could use it right away for my theme collection.

The sheet I found is from Mongolia.
Most people know the stamps of Mongolia because we all have encountered the CTO stamps that are widely spread.
Having Mongolian MNH stamps is not so obvious, especially not from the 1970's and 80's.

Mongolia Mi 736-47 - 1972

The stamps are dedicated to the discovery of space, and the zodiac signs of the Chinese calendar are added to each of the 12 stamps.
In the border of the sheetlet, also the symbols for each sign are given.

All signs together - from Mongolia Mi 736-47

If you have one or only some of those stamps in your collection you would probably not have known they represent all signs of the chinese zodiac. But 'finding' a sheet like this one, made me discover it.

Off you go now... on tresor hunt!

Theme : Volkswagen Beetle - 17

Lybia was in the news,  so why not an article about Lybian stamps...

Lybian stamps didn't always bare the name 'Lybia', but often also L.A.R.  which stands for Lybian Arabic Republic.
I'm not specificly collecting Lybian stamps, but sometimes my eye catches an item that I can't miss, especially if it fits into my theme collection.

Actually the stamp I'm showing now, is not the most important part of this item. At least not for me.
It's a sheetlet but the border frame is more of my intrest.
Let me show you why.

Lybia sheet UPU 1974

As you can see in the border, a postal vehicle is depicted.
And hurray, it's a Volkswagen beetle !

Detail sheet Lybia 1974

On the stamp, the logo of the UPU is shown.
This sheetlet was issued in 1974, to celebrate the centennial of that UPU.
It's a nice tribute to the UPU, and a great way to promote the Beelte too.

Theme : Zodiac signs 08

For those who follow this blog since long time, but also for those who just joined, a new post on the topic of "zodiac signs".

I came along the stamps rather accidentally.
As I bought some used Libanese stamps lately on a fair.
When I came home and sorted them out, i found a colourful set.
Looking in the catalogue, I found out that it was a 1957 set on 'communication'.
The set of 9 values has 2 different designs.

On the last 4 stamps in this set, a high voltage device is shown.

But on the first 5 (lower) values, I found something that isn't really related to 'communication'...

5 lower values with zodiac signs

Let's have a closer look at the centre of the stamps :
The cedar in the centre shows us that it's a Lebanese stamp, that's for sure. Well we could have discovered that by looking at the land's name on the stamp too of course.
However, around that cedar tree, all zodiac signs are shown.

12 zodiac sign around the Lebanese Cedar Tree

The higher values have another design...

35p, 50p, 65p and 100p design

The complete set can be found under : Michel 611 - 19 (1957)

Thai coins : 01 f - 10 baht commemorative coins

It's been a while, but there is so much to post about the bimetallic coins from Thailand. In my previous posts I showed many 10 baht coins, and there are still lots to go ...

Y # 391

100 years after the foundation of the Insperctors General's Department, on May 6, 2003, this commemorative coin was emitted.
The head of King Bumibhol is on the front side, and on the back, the logo of the Department.

Y 391 front

Y 391 back - departments logo

Y # 392

On the same day, May6, 2003 a coin was emitted to honour the King's sister, Princess Galyani Vadhana.
She was the older sister of King Bumibhol, and she was active in the Thai Red Cross.

King Bumibhol's brother, sister and the King as a young boy

Together with her brother, the King, she was very popular and respected by the Thai.

Y 392 front

Y 392 back

H.R.H. Princess Galyani Vadhana

Her Royal Highness Princess Galyani Vadhana passed away at 2:54 AM on 2 January 2008 at the age of 84.

Y # 396

Any celebration is good to be commemorated.
For the 90th anniversary of the Government Savings Bank, founded under supervision of King Rama VI.

Y 396 front

Y 396 back

King Rama VI

Government Savings Bank

Y # 400

For the last coin in this post, I will show you the 10 baht coin that was issued at the occasion of the APEC assembly that was held in Bangkok in 2003.
Face side is the head of King Rama IX, at the back the logo for this event.
A globe is shown with the front (dragon) of the royal barks.

front Y 400 - King Rama IX

back Y 400 - APEC meeting 2003

All countries on both sides of the Pacific Ocean are member.

More to follow ...