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Heading for a Gross profit
Reported at www.smithsonianmag.com
A 1-cent USA postage stamp from 1868 is up for auction and could fetch up to $5 million.
A New York auction house is selling what it calls “America’s Most Valuable Postage Stamp”—a 1-cent “Z-grill” stamp from 1868 featuring Benjamin Franklin. It's one of only two of its kind known to exist. The auction will mark the first time the rare stamp is up for sale in 26 years. It's rarity comes from what philatelists call a "Z-grill".
Z-grill stamps are among the most coveted for collectors. A grill is a type of mark impressed into a postage stamp invented in 1867 to prevent reuse. The Z-grill, named after its zig-zag pattern, is the rarest of the grill shapes.
Owning any Z-grill is no small feat, let alone a 1-cent Z-grill. The U.S. Post Office stopped issuing the stamps in the early 1870s and very few are known to still exist.
“Most of [the Z-grill stamps] were 2-cent and 12-cent stamps. Some were 3-cent stamps. And very, very few were 1-cent, 10-cent and 15-cent stamps,” explains Scott Trepel, the president of Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries, the auction house.
The only other known surviving copy of the 1-cent Z-grill stamp is at the New York Public Library, which received the stamp as a donation in 1925.
The stamp is the most-valued piece of what some industry observers have called the most complete and significant collection of American postage stamps ever assembled, one that was built over decades by the “Bond King”, Bill Gross.
Gross says he was introduced to philately as a child, when his mother gave him a stamp album that she believed would help him pay for college. While those stamps proved to be essentially worthless, Gross wanted to show that stamps could be a good investment and went on to become one of the most prolific 21st-century stamp collectors.
Gross came to acquire the stamp in 2005 when Shreve, acting as his representative, traded with the Mystic Stamp Company for it by bartering a plate block of Inverted Jennys worth $2,970,000. According to the auction house, it was known as the “Greatest Stamp Swap of All Time.”
In collecting the 1-cent Z-grill, Gross had what is known as a "complete" U.S. stamp collection, becoming only the second person to do so.
Since 2007, Gross has been selling off stamps from his international collection and in 2018, he began to sell the U.S. collection; he has given the proceeds of these sales to charity. The mogul claimed that “getting all of the rarest stamps took patience, but the chase was the fun part.”
The 1-cent Z-grill stamp will go on sale on June 14, along with 99 other top stamps in Gross’ collection. The entire collection is expected to generate between $15 million and $20 million.
Let the Games stamps begin!
Reported at www.francsjeux.com
The official stamp for the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games, in collaboration between the Paris 2024 Organizing Committee and La Poste Group, was officially released at the French Postal Museum recently.
Drawing inspiration from the visual identity of the Paris Olympics, the stamp features the iconic Eiffel Tower and the River Seine with sporting elements and an overall neo-art-deco look.
"This stamp carries the colours of Paris 2024 and will fully contribute to opening up the Games. We can't wait to see it travel in France and around the world," said the President of the Paris 2024 Organizing Committee.
La Poste Group issued its first official Olympic stamp in 1924, when Paris hosted the eighth Summer Olympic Games. Subsequent Olympic events in France, such as the Grenoble Winter Olympics in 1968 and the Albertville Winter Olympics in 1992, also saw the release of Olympic stamps by La Poste.
Following the successful bid of Paris to host the 2024 Summer Olympics in 2017, La Poste released a special stamp which included the signature of the bid committee, "Come and share", its logo and image of the Grand Palais.
800,000 copies of the new stamps will be issued and go on sale on March 29.
In for the long run in Ethiopia
Reported at https://ethiopianmonitor.com
Ethio Post has dedicated a series of new postage stamps in honour of the legendary Ethiopian athlete Derartu Tulu.
The postage stamps were released on the same day the two-time Olympic gold medallist celebrated her 53 birthday on March 21, 2024.
“Today, we pay homage to a trailblazer who not only ran her way into history but also left indelible footprints on the hearts of millions,” Ethio Post announced.
Derartu joined the sports history books as the first black African woman to win the Olympic gold medal at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
She also won her second Olympic gold in the same 10,000m event in Sydney, a world champion title in Edmonton. and became the world cross country champion on three occasions before turning to the marathon and notching victories in London, Tokyo, and New York.
The four stamps feature the athlete in action as well as celebrating her winning runs at the Barcelona and Sydney Olympics.
“These stamps are more a tribute to the inspiration, resilience, and monumental achievements on the global stage that we all associate with Derartu,” Ethio Post said.
Currently, Derartu is president of the Ethiopian Athletics Federation.
Risky business in Australia
Reported at www.parcelandpostaltechnologyinternational.com
New safety data from Australia Post has revealed that posties logged over 81,000 hazards in the last 12 months, equating to more than 200 a day on average.
Hazards tracked and logged on posties’ handheld devices included dogs as the biggest risk, followed by low hanging branches and obstructive trees. However, there were some more unusual hazards including magpie and other bird attaches, insect nests in letterboxes and roped off driveways.
Across the country, New South Wales had the highest number of logged hazards throughout the year at over 20,000, followed by Victoria with nearly 19,000.
In the other states and territories, Queensland logged over 16,000 hazards, South Australia logged over 13,000, Western Australia had over 10,000, Tasmania logged 1,300, the Australian Capital Territory logged over 900 and the Northern Territory logged over 500 hazards.
The digital hazard tool was rolled out 12 months ago to help reduce incidents and injury to posties, allowing them to immediately digitally log a hazard. The next time they, or any other postie, approach a pre-logged location they will receive a warning notification on their device.
An Australia Post spokesperson said, “Once a hazard is logged in the system we take the necessary steps to try and resolve it for our team.”
In addition to the hazard tool, Australia Post also uses video footage and sensors across its delivery fleet to help to reduce serious accidents as its delivery team takes to the streets each day. A report last year also revealed that a postie is injured by a third party on the roads at a rate of one a week.
Risky business in USA
Reported at www.vindy.com
The recent shooting death shooting death of Ohio mail carrier Jont’e J. Davis, 33 has raised again the risks facing US post office workers as they go about their business.
One of the major dangers is the risk of robberies, especially ones in which the perpetrator has sought to obtain the mail carrier’s master key, which opens boxes containing mail.
There were two incidents in Youngstown in 2023 in which mail carriers were robbed of their master key. Neither mail carrier was injured but the robberies are indicative of a problem which has been more pronounced in other areas, including Cleveland.
According to a USPS news release, 412 USPS letter carriers were robbed on the job during its fiscal year 2022, while 305 incidents of carriers being robbed were reported in the first half of fiscal year 2023 alone.
According to the release, USPS and the Postal Inspection Service have made efforts to expand its Project Safe Delivery crime prevention initiative. The goal of the project is to “protect postal employees and facilities, prevent mail and package theft, and enforce the law against individuals who perpetrate crimes against postal employees or engage in mail and package theft.”
To help achieve this goal, the postal service is installing 12,000 high-security blue collection boxes across the United States; and replacing 49,000 “antiquated” arrow locks with electronic locks.
Selling the farm in India
Reported at https://frontline.thehindu.com
Once a vibrant avenue for promoting farm policies, India’s stamps now feature farming as background, sidelining the pivotal role farmers play in nation building.
When was the last time farmers featured in an Indian postage stamp?
In 1992, when the Department of Posts commemorated the silver jubilee of Haryana. The stamp showed a farmer and his wife in the foreground of power transmission lines, tap water supply, and a farmer driving a tractor in a field.
Over the past two decades, agricultural products have featured on Indian stamps more often than producers.
Farming -related stamps themes peaked in the 1980s but declined when agriculture was no longer among the priorities of the government. This is in contrast with the earlier decades, especially the period between the mid-1960s and early 1980s that witnessed a whole-of-government approach to agriculture, with the postal department playing a role in building awareness at multiple levels.
The conscious use of the postal system to promote the government’s agricultural policies began after Independence. A set of four commemorative stamps, including one featuring a farmer couple, was issued for the inauguration of the Republic on January 26, 1950.
The sustained campaign to promote government policies began on January 26, 1955, when the government issued the second definitive series comprising 18 stamps on industry, rare earths, agriculture and multipurpose projects, health, cottage industry, and transport and communication to canvass support for the Second Five-Year Plan (1956-61) a year ahead of its launch.
The government set a target of raising foodgrain output by 30 million tonnes between 1967 and 1971 to ease supply-side pressure. At the same time, it also promoted family planning to address the demand side of the problem. This marked the beginning of a sustained campaign to promote the expansion of agricultural output and population control that lasted over three decades.
In addition to food grains, stamps of this series featured dairy farming, pisciculture, poultry, horticulture (cashew, apple, and orange), and non-food crops (hybrid cotton and rubber). But the new approach to agriculture required literate farmers, who had access to irrigation and new technology. The series, therefore, included stamps on Adult education, Minor irrigation, and Transfer of Technology (from lab to farms), respectively.
By the late 1990s, the postal campaign to promote the government’s agricultural policy—a campaign that ran for over three decades—came to an end.
The retreat of the state, considerable improvements in foodgrain output and foreign exchange reserves, and a drop in fertility explain the end of these three longstanding campaigns.
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Celebrating the farm in Spain
Reported at https://filatelia.correos.es
Spain has had a long running program of promoting its unique cuisine through stamps with the Gastronomy series highlighting reginal specialty dishes.
In the last 6 years the series has focused on foodstuffs with Protected Designations of Origin status.
The denomination of origin is a geographical indication used on a product that has a specific geographical origin, whose qualities, reputation and characteristics are essentially due to its place of origin. It is a seal that shows a link or cause-effect relationship between the specific characteristics of the product and the geographical environment of the production area.
This year’s issue is Gastronomy - Protected Designations of Origin, Extremadura, Jerte Valley Cherry, Vera Paprika.
Pimentón de la Vera is the product obtained from the grinding of dried red bell pepper fruits dried with oak wood, by the vertical current drying system with a lower hearth, used in La Vera, using emery stone mills.
Pimentón de la Vera is a product with a smoky, intense and penetrating flavour and aroma, due to this drying process.
The Protected Designation of Origin "Cereza del Jerte" exclusively covers fresh table cherries originating from the area located in the northern regions of the province of Cáceres. This area has very specific and homogeneous geographical, physical, historical and cultural characteristics. The crop is grown on small terraced farms, located on the slopes located on shady or sunny slopes.
Beware the embrace of Darcula
Reported at www.scmagazine.com
A new Chinese-language phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) platform named "darcula" has been targeting postal organizations in more than 100 countries, including the United States Postal Service (USPS).
Researchers said in a March 27 post that the attacks use more than 20,000 phishing domains to trick victims into entering credentials and other sensitive information in the belief they are interacting with legitimate postal organizations.
The researchers said the “darcula” platform has been used for numerous high-profile phishing attacks over the last year, including messages received on Apple and Android devices in the United Kingdom, as well as package scams impersonating USPS in the United States. There have also been many attacks across the Middle East.
“We found ‘darcula’ to be the most pervasive worldwide package scam operation we have seen,” said an industry authority.
Darcula uses Rich Communication Services (RCS) — the default SMS app provided on many Android devices enabling the attackers bypass SMS firewalls.
RCS has end-to-end encryption, offering users the sense of a more secure and private messaging experience but it’s a tremendous benefit for malicious actors in that it enhances the agility and adaptability of phishing campaigns, making them more effective against evolvin security measures.
It also lowers the technical barrier for new malicious actors, enabling even those with limited skills to conduct sophisticated attacks seamlessly making it a persistent and adaptable threat in the cybersecurity ecosystem.
Wings clipped in Germany
Reported at www.dw.com
The last planes carrying letters for delivery within Germany took off in late March as German postal service Deutsche Post discontinues its domestic mail flights after more than 62 years.
The cessation of the aerial transport, designed to cut costs and greenhouse emissions, comes after Germany's coalition government moved to relax rules governing delivery times, meaning that customers will now have to wait longer for letters.
The very last aircraft carrying domestic mail took off from Berlin and flew to the southwestern city of Stuttgart early on Thursday morning, the German dpa news agency said. Other planes previously departed from Hannover, Munich and Stuttgart, with the altogether six aircraft carrying around 1.5 million letters weighing 53 metric tons (58.5 US tons), according to dpa.
Deutsche Post says that transporting letters by land instead of by air will reduce CO2 emissions per letter by about 80%.
Deutsche Post will, however, still rely on air transport for letters destined for abroad. That mail will be transported in the hold on regular passenger flights.
Posties under pressure in New Zealand
Reported at www.rnz.co.nz
Postal workers say NZ Post's plan to replace them with couriers will make deliveries slower and inefficient.
The company plans to lay off 700 posties over the next five years and pass their duties to contracted courier drivers.
NZ Post last year said it would "trial a whole range of things" to figure out what worked best in response to declining mail volumes.
Twenty years ago, New Zealanders sent more than one billion mail items a year - but this has decreased dramatically to around 220 million with further decreases predicted.
The postal workers union has responded arguing van delivery would be slowed down because it's much quicker to go along the footpath on an electric bike with the posties holding onto mail and small packets and parcels than to deliver by petrol powered vans having to find parking spots.
It also claims NZ Post's plan to replace postal workers with contractors violates the State Owned Enterprises Act.
Heroic posties honoured
Reported at www.atlasobscura.com
The disaster on the RMS Titanic is forever linked to Southampton—the British port city where the ship launched on April 10, 1912. Graves and memorials are dotted all over the city. All told, over 500 Southhampton households lost at least one family member from the wreck. This memorial is dedicated to five people lost in the disaster, whose role onboard was tied directly to the ship’s title.
The “RMS” in RMS Titanic stood for Royal Mail Ship. As well as people, the Titanic was built to transport mail across the Atlantic. Mail officers onboard had crew quarters separate from the standard crew.
On the night of the disaster, shortly after the Titanic struck the iceberg, the five mail officers, who were mid-birthday celebrations for postal clerk Oscar Woody, realized the mail room was flooding fast. They had over 3,000 sacks of mail onboard and the five men started to work hard to save the mail.
One steward who was roped in to help gives us a clue as to how the men attended their duties, testifying: “I urged them to leave their work. They shook their heads and continued at their work. It might have been an inrush of water later that cut off their escape, or it may have been the explosion. I saw them no more.”
The five postal officers wouldn’t survive the disaster.
They are honoured in the Southampton Civic Centre with one of the most unique memorials to the disaster: a piece of the Titanic itself. The Harland and Wolff shipyard, which built the Titanic, donated a spare propeller to be recast to make this memorial.
More than 1,500 people died after the Titanic hit an iceberg off the southeast coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
Among them were the five postal clerks: U.K. citizens James Williamson and Jago Smith and U.S. citizens William Gwinn, John March, and Oscar Woody. Not everyone would stand by their posts in the face of death, but in the early hours of April 15th, these men did right until the end.
See next month's Stamps in the News at https://www.stampboards.com/viewtopic.php?p=11593048#p11593048
I know they're harmless but it would freak me out immediately!
My arachnophobia is off the charts. Lizards and snakes, those I can handle, but if it has more than four legs, I'm toast.
