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Worth a pretty penny?
Reported at https://edition.cnn.com
The first known piece of mail sent using a prepaid stamp — “one of the greatest leaps forward in human communication” — could fetch between $1.5 million and $2.5 million when it comes up for auction at Sotheby’s in New York in February.
If the piece realizes its estimate, Sotheby’s said it would become one of the most valuable pieces of postal history to have ever been auctioned.
Dated May 2, 1840, the letter’s original recipient was William Blenkinsop Jr., the 35-year-old manager of a Victorian iron works in Bedlington, a town in the north of England.
Sotheby’s state that all that’s known about the letter’s sender is that they posted the missive in London and paid for it with the Penny Black stamp.
After receiving the letter, Blenkinsop Jr. turned the envelope inside out and refashioned it as a “Mulready” – an ornate wrapper embellished with images representing the British Empire that acted as another method of prepaid payment introduced at the same time as the Penny Black.
That second envelope reached a Mr. Blenkinsop, most likely his father, who lived 75 miles away in Dalston, Carlisle and kept it, although the contents of both letters themselves have been lost.
“Surviving over 180 years, the ornate Mulready envelope sealed with a Penny Black revolutionized the way people from all walks of life correspond, exchange ideas, share news and express themselves,” a Sotherby’s spokesperson said.
Both sides of the envelope still bear the stamped dates on which they were sent, the first on May 2, 1840 and the second on May 4, two days before the official start date of the Penny Black.
While the stamp was wildly successful and subsequently adopted worldwide, the Mulready envelope was withdrawn after it was ridiculed by the public.
In the US, it’s a cow, it’s a monkey…no it’s a dragon
Reported at https://sfstandard.com
As the Year of the Dragon approaches, not everyone is happy about the new Chinese New Year stamp issued by the United States Postal Service.
Since 1993, the USPS has released a stamp featuring each year’s zodiac animal. However, this year’s Year of the Dragon design has sparked some backlash from San Francisco's Chinese community.
“It doesn’t look like an Asian dragon at all,” Leland Wong, a Chinatown-based artist said. “I thought it was a monkey.”
Wong posted a news article slamming the “monkey-like” dragon, triggering dozens of other comments criticizing the design.
Claudine Cheng, the president of the Asian Pacific American Heritage Foundation, who advocated for the Lunar New Year stamp decades ago, expressed discontent with this fierce-looking dragon.
“People are celebrating the Lunar New Year and like to see an image that brings happiness and good luck,” Cheng said. “When you look at this interpretation, it doesn't evoke that kind of emotion.”
Cheng acknowledged that the artist can have their own interpretation of a dragon, but “it has to be culturally sensitive.”
David Ho, of the Chinatown Media & Arts Collaborative, said that the design looks like a cow, resembling the well-known evil fictional character Bull Demon King (牛魔王) in ancient Chinese literature.
Camille Chew, an East Coast-based artist, was commissioned to design this 12-year Lunar New Year stamp series, which runs from 2020 to 2031, according to the postal service.
In a statement, the postal service said the design team always consults with experts and its Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee when working on a stamp design.
According to the postal service's website, the agency will print 22 million copies of the stamp.
“I think we need to leave them room to consider a different approach for the second half of this series,” Cheng said. “They still have seven zodiacs to go, so I think we want to leave room for improvement.”
There was more dragon controversary in the last dragon cycle in 2012 when people purchasing the Lunar New Year stamps in China were shocked at the design: "When I saw this year's dragon stamp, I was scared to death!" wrote one Weibo user, echoing the comments of many.
The dragon was depicted with its fangs bearing and claws out, seemingly ready to pounce. Its eyes are a dark abyss with only the littlest beads of white staring out at the viewer.
In India its Lord Ram
Reported at www.thehindu.com
Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has released commemorative postage stamps on the Ram temple recently, along with a book of stamps on the Ramayana from around the world.
He said the appeal of Lord Ram transcends the boundaries of “time, society, caste, religion, and region.”
The release of the six stamps comes days before the consecration ceremony at the new Ram temple in Ayodhya on January 22.
“These stamps are the smallest form of history books, artefacts and historical sites and serve as a miniature form of epics and great ideas,” he said.
Rama is one of the most widely worshipped Hindu deities, the embodiment of chivalry and virtue, the seventh incarnation of Vishnu. His story is told briefly in the Mahabharata and at great length in the Ramayana.
Rich in symbolism, the stamps contain water, earth and perfume (symbolising air) all airfreighted from the temple site in Ayodhya and mixed with the ink at the stamp printing presses. The other element of fire is represented by the image of the sun on the stamps.
The Ram temple opening fulfills a decades long Hindu nationalist pledge that is expected to resonate with voters during the upcoming national election expected in April or May.
Meanwhile, in Nepal
Reported at https://bnnbreaking.com
In an intriguing coincidence, as the Ram temple in Ayodhya nears its sanctification, a 57-year-old postage stamp from Nepal has resurfaced, capturing public attention.
The stamp, featuring Lord Ram and Goddess Sita, coincidentally marks the year 2024 in the Vikram Samvat calendar. Remarkably, 2024 aligns with the temple’s sanctification ceremony. This alignment is due to the Hindu calendar being 57 years ahead of the Gregorian calendar.
The stamp, issued on April 18, 1967, for Ram Navami, now resonates with devotees as it seemingly predicts the return of Lord Ram to the temple in 2024. Devotees have anticipated this moment for over 550 years, and the temple is prepared to host the deity in its sanctum sanctorum on January 22.
A chance to make right a miscarriage of justice on the Horizon?
Reported at https://apnews.com
An inquiry into one of Britain’s gravest injustices has resumed as momentum has grown to compensate and clear the names of more than 900 Post Office branch managers wrongly convicted of theft or fraud because of a faulty computer system.
The inquiry that began three years ago resumed the day after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak vowed to introduce unprecedented legislation to reverse the convictions following a television docudrama that created a huge surge of public support for the former postmasters.
“This is one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation’s history,” Sunak said. “People who worked hard to serve their communities had their lives and their reputations destroyed through absolutely no fault of their own. The victims must get justice and compensation.”
The Metropolitan Police said this month, that it was investigating “potential fraud offences arising out of these prosecutions,” relating to money the Post Office received “as a result of prosecutions or civil actions” against falsely accused postal workers.
After the Post Office rolled out the Horizon information technology system, developed by Japanese company Fujitsu, in 1999 to automate sales accounting, local Post Office managers began finding unexplained losses they were responsible to cover.
The Post Office maintained Horizon was reliable and accused branch managers of dishonesty. Between 2000 and 2014, around 900 postal workers were wrongly convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting, with some going to prison and others forced into bankruptcy.
In total, more than 2,000 people were affected by the scandal. Some killed themselves or attempted suicide. Others said their marriages fell apart and reported becoming community pariahs.
A group of postal workers took legal action against the Post Office in 2016. Three years later, the High Court in London ruled that Horizon contained a number of “bugs, errors and defects” and that the Post Office “knew there were serious issues about the reliability” of the system.
“Failures of investigation and disclosure were so egregious as to make the prosecution of any of the ‘Horizon cases’ an affront to the conscience of the court,” Justice Timothy Holroyde said.
To date, just 95 convictions have been overturned.
The moment of reckoning was a long time in the making, but it was turbocharged by a four-part television docudrama that aired Jan. 1 and fuelled public outrage that led to days of bruising headlines about the Post Office and sparked a swift response by lawmakers.
Despite hundreds of news stories over the years about court hearings and the continuing public inquiry, the show seen by millions rapidly galvanized support for victims of the injustice.
More than 1 million people signed an online petition calling for former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells to lose her Commander of the Order of the British Empire title she received in 2018. By the end of Tuesday, she said she would relinquish the honour.
Paul Patterson, Europe director of Japan's Fujitsu Ltd who created the faulty technology, told a committee of UK politicians that the company will provide funds to compensate branch managers.
"I think there is a moral obligation for the company to contribute," said Mr Patterson, who has been in his post since 2019.
"To the sub-postmasters and their families, Fujitsu would like to apologise for our part in this appalling miscarriage of justice."
The government plans to set aside 1 billion pounds ($1.28 billion) to compensate the wrongly convicted and others whose lives were destroyed in the scandal.
To date, a total of nearly 150 million pounds has been paid to more than 2,500 victims, Sunak said.
In addition to the inquiry, a committee in Parliament plans to question the chief executives of the Post Office and Fujitsu. Some members of Parliament have called for prosecuting those who allowed postmasters to take the blame for the faulty software.
Last week, police in London said they were investigating potential fraud related to money the Post Office received as a result of prosecutions or civil actions against postal workers. They are also looking into possible perjury or perversion of justice charges over the Post Office’s investigation and prosecution of the cases.
The investigation will take at least until 2026, Britain’s most senior police officer has admitted.
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Monkey business in Djbouti
Reported at www.mayoclinicproceedings.org
Mpox came to worldwide attention in May 2022, when a cluster of cases was detected in London, initially in men connected with a person who had recently travelled to the United Kingdom from Nigeria.
By July 2022, the disease had been observed in many people with no travel history or identifiable sick contact and in numerous countries outside of the United Kingdom and Africa, so the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a “public health emergency of international concern.”
With population education about transmission and targeted vaccination, the outbreak waned, and in May 2023, the WHO declared that the public health emergency was over.
In November 2022, the WHO issued a statement that the organization would use the term mpox instead of the misleading term “monkeypox”, and the WHO encouraged other agencies, public health workers, and medical personnel to do the same. Monkeys are not a natural reservoir of the disease.
However, in 2022, Djibouti and the Central African Republic (CAR) each issued 2 stamp sheets on the subject of “Variole du singe,” French for monkeypox.
Both countries have liberal stamp-issuing policies and have issued many stamps designed to appeal to international collectors on topics not directly connected with the issuing nations.
CAR issued nearly 1000 new stamps in 2018 alone, most prepared by Stamperija, a printing company in Lithuania. Few–if any–of these stamps are used postally.
These 2022 stamp issues correctly suggest the smallpox (variola) vaccination can be beneficial in mpox prevention but are problematic in several ways.
The CAR sheets include photos of chimpanzees while the Djibouti sheets include a rather sinister-appearing macaque, even though primates are not natural reservoirs of mpox , monkeys were not the source of the 2022 public health emergency and exposure to them poses no transmission risk.
Both Djibouti philatelic sheets double down on this misconception by including a triangular yellow hazard sign warning against cartoon monkeys with viral proteins emerging from their heads. In addition, the Djibouti stamps include an image of an African child suffering from a severe case of smallpox, rather than mpox–a photograph taken before smallpox was eradicated in the 1970s.
Handsome hippos in Botswana
Reported at www.botswanapost.post
BotswanaPost continues its rich tradition of issuing captivating stamps through its Philatelic Unit. Every five years, a definitive set is released, showcasing themes of international interest, while commemorative sets, reflecting Botswana's environment, culture, and historical heritage, are issued 4 or 5 times annually.
BotswanaPost released its second Commemorative Stamp Issue of the year in late 2023– Hippopotamus in Botswana. This release not only marks a celebration of Botswana's diverse and thriving wildlife but also emphasizes the nation's commitment to environmental conservation.
Botswana, renowned for its ecological tapestry, is home to one of the largest hippopotamus populations in Africa. The Chobe River and the Okavango Delta, iconic natural wonders, play host to a substantial number.
Through this stamp issue, BotswanaPost not only showcases the country's dedication to environmental conservation but also advocates for the protection and preservation of habitats crucial for these remarkable animals.
Getting things sorted in Indonesia
Reported at www.parcelandpostaltechnologyinternational.com
PT Pos Indonesia has introduced robotic parcel sorting technology at its processing centre in Surabaya, a port city on the island of Java, as part of its move toward full automation.
The t-Sort system from Libiao Robotics has been integrated with Pos Indonesia’s existing IT system along with RFID parcel scanning software, to enable parcels and letters to be tracked from the moment they leave the sender until they arrive at the delivery address.
“Everything is connected,” explained a director of Pos Indonesia. “This means we will be able to ensure the fast and safe parcel and letter delivery that our customers expect.”
The t-Sort system consists of sorting robots, an easy-to-assemble operating platform and control software. Its modular design means it is quick and easy to relocate, so Pos Indonesia can reconfigure the sorting process with minimal disruption to the business.
The switch from manual to automated parcel sorting at the Surabaya processing facility means Pos Indonesia has been able to reassign 80% of its staff to more profitable tasks within the business.
Getting things moving in Algeria
Reported at www.poste.dz
As part of a general push to kick start it’s economy, Algeria is currently undertaking various reforms aimed at supporting the entrepreneurial spirit and encouraging young people to engage in the field of business leadership.
This includes provision of financial support and legal guidance. Schemes such as support agencies, assistance programs and loan guarantee funds have been established to promote and support entrepreneurship, thus strengthening the confidence of young Algerians in their ideas.
As part of this initiative, a new stamp has been issued: "Encouraging young people to enter the world of entrepreneurship" to support this development and contribute to raising awareness of the importance of initiative and innovation among young people.
The objective is to inspire them to follow in the footsteps of their entrepreneurial peers and to welcome the State's initiatives by supporting young project leaders through the establishment of the necessary facilities.
Danish backflip
Reported at www.philapress.de
In last month’s Stamps in the News we reported the radical postal changes that came into force on January 1st 2024 including the immediate invalidation of all existing domestic stamps.
The radical postal reform in Denmark, which came into force in the new year, has caused quite a stir. Now PostNord has backflipped and is offering an exchange option for the previous Danish stamps.
Originally, all postage stamps for domestic mail were supposed to become invalid with effect from January 1, 2024, as VAT will be charged on domestic mail traffic in the future and PostNord must follow a requirement from the Ministry of Taxation. The stamps should only remain usable for VAT-exempt foreign traffic until the end of 2024.
Since January 8th and until June 30th, 2024, stamps in denominations of 12 and 36 crowns as well as supplementary stamps of 1 crown that were issued in the past two years can now be exchanged. Exchanges can be made from a minimum total denomination of 120 crowns. In addition, an exchange fee of 50 crowns is due.
After all, PostNord follows the laws of logic for foreign correspondence in the revised regulations. The original decision to arbitrarily declare the VAT-exempt stamps for this VAT-exempt service invalid at the end of 2024 has been repealed.
The chairman of the Danish Philatelist Association is not very enthusiastic about PostNord's actions. But also about how the political parties and ministries that are responsible for the amendment to the law have acted in the past few months.
“It would have been more consumer-friendly if all the old stamps could have been exchanged by the end of the year,” he said. He sees the revised regulations as a success, which also came about through the lobbying of philatelists.
Further drastic changes are certainly foreseeable, as PostNord only holds the rights to process international mail until 2024. As expected, the private postal provider DAO has thrown its hat into the ring for domestic mail traffic. Interestingly for philatelists: DAO is also considering issuing its own “shipping stamps”.
Follow this developing story on Stampboards [at]http://tinyurl.com/53bwa9yh
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