Libraries today are anything but gloomily silent places for reading. The hundred-year-old library movement’s diversity and its current forms are shown on two Europa stamps. Children’s book illustrator Leena Lumme depicts a book as a door opening into worlds of fact and fancy.
Title: Europa 2010 – Children’s Book
Date of Issue: 4 May 2010
Country: Finland
Denominations: 0,80€ x 2
Croatia has issued a new postage stamp block – Expo 2010. The motif of the stamp is the map of the Old town of Dubrovnik, while the motif of the block is the map of the Shanghai Underground. The stamp block was designed by Ivana Vucic and Orsat Frankovic.
The set is designed to capture some of the similarities that exist between the cultures of New Zealand and China.
Described on New Zealand Post's website as "innovative yet elegantly classical", the stamps depict a series of scenes that connect with the Expo and its theme of 'Better City, Better Life'.
The New Zealand pavilion explores the New Zealand lifestyle and the Expo's theme through 'Cities of Nature, Living between Land and Sky'.
It is those special features of a stunning New Zealand pavilion that have inspired the designs in the five stamps that make up the set. Each stamp depicts a scene in both New Zealand and China, resulting in a product that is twice the size of the standard New Zealand postage stamp.
The Postal Service, together with Ellen DeGeneres and Halo: Purely for Pets, is giving shelter pets around the country a first-class meal. During the launch of the stamps, Halo will be donating a million meals to animal shelters around the country.
The campaign continues the Postal Service's tradition of raising awareness of serious social issues with special commemorative stamps. The 44-cent stamps feature photos of five cats and five dogs who were all adopted from shelters.
Previous postage stamps featuring cats and dogs have included a 13-cent stamp of a kitten and puppy playing in the snow in 1982; a set of pet stamps in 1998 and in 2002 when a kitten and puppy were featured on the "Neuter or Spay" stamps.
A cover bearing the scarce 1900 10pf Carmine stamp will sell from Gross's collection at Spink Shreves:-PIMCO's "Bond King" Bill Gross, also recognised as the greatest stamp collector of modern times will be selling his Western Europe and its Colonies philatelic collection at Spink Shreves in New York on May 19.
The sale - Gross's fifth in recent years - is more than likely to continue the success of his $3.2m sale of US Confederate Provisionals and British North American stamps late last year; and will put another set of extremely fine and rare stamps back into the market.
Among these is the 1900 10pf Carmine cover, a tremendously rare stamp here marked with a diagonal "China" overprint at a 45 degree angle, with a Michel Type 3 "5 Pf." surcharge and additional "5" handstamped surcharge.
Also on the cover, addressed to Neisse Germany, is a German Offices in China 1898 5pf Green, and a China 1898 ½c Coiling Dragon stamp marked with two clear strikes of a date stamp reading "Tsingtau, Kiautschau/29.8/00".
Only about 100 stamps were produced, and it is believed that only two examples of this immensely rare philatelic specimen exist on cover. This makes it without question one of the greatest rarities of both German Colonial and Chinese philately extant.
The cover appeared as one of the highlights of the famed Meiso Mizuhara exhibition collection. Signed by Drahn, Hermann and Richter, as well as being accompanied by a 1970 Bothe certificate, the historic cover carries an estimate of $82,500.
