"O Canada" ...

[Richard Weltz]

In a message dated 6/28/2000 8:07:38 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
ibbe...@IDIRECT.COM writes:

> Canada Post balances its budget by selling collectors' stamps. Large
> numbers are produced each year in the hope that CP won't have to honour
> them.

This is a practice that has been going on for many years. Among the countries
on this moneyraising bandwagon are Canada, Israel, Australia, Switzerland,
Luxembourg, and many others. You can arrange to have copies of every new
stamp sent directly to you via a subscription account. The United States
joined the group ten years or so ago and now also produces stamps and other
"collectible" postal items which are extremely profitable, as no service will
be rendered.

The personalization idea, however, is a new one -- and one that doesn't sound
so terrific for a lot of reasons, including the esthetics.

-- Dick Weltz, Spectrum Multilanguage Communications, NYC
Translation, Typography & Prepress in All Foreign Languages
====================================================
Info, humor, recipe, freebies, and more! Visit our Language
News & Notes pages at -- http://come.to/spectrum

[arthur]

There was a news story about how 2 Australian housewives went to Australia
Post with the idea of putting family photos onto stamps. apparently
Australia Post took their proposal, considered it, and told them that it
wasn't a good idea. Half a year later they launched their personalized photo
stamps and claimed that it was their idea and not the same as the one from
the 2 house wives.

So who/which country came up with the idea first?

I thought it would have been neat to put your design work on the stamps
instead of a photo of yourself or your pet etc. Photos of metal type would
go down really well on the stamps (I'm not being sarcastic). I'm sure that
the creativity would tear the stamp authorities away from portraits of dead
people, paintings of flowers and rabbits etc.