Sunday, March 20, 2016

Week #2016.11 on SébPhilatélie

A week of wandering of my mind... even in philately.

Monday 14th March: a red postcard, nice for a quiz.
Just a card received from Germany thank to Postcrossing.
Red stamps by http://www.wildepixel.com/.
Can you identify all this modern red stamps?

Friday 18th March: when French politicians become delusional...
One of the French philatelic haven, the Kerguelen islands in the French Southern and Antarctic Lands become famous this Wednesday after a conservative right politician proposed on newsradio to arrest without due process every Frenchmen coming back from Syria and isolate them in the Kerguelens...

Stay tune for the new postal history of the French penitentiary colony revival.

Saturday 19th March: regional exhibition in Montpellier.
The local association organised in Montpellier the regional congress of Languedoc and Roussillon with a four dealer and almost thirty collection event.

Part of those collections I found interest in were already exhibited last year at the annual Spring show in May or at the Stamp Festival last October. But I didn't mind a new look at Claude Pesche's postal history of the Jerusalem post offices from the Ottoman Empire to 1948... How many "philatelic countries" could there be in a city or a region?

Two tickled my curiosity by reshaping known stamps or knowledge into something unusual. J. Paraseit studied the postal history of La Réunion during the franc CFA currency period (1945-1975) with overprinted stamps of France and he proposed covers cancelled by the travelling post office on the sole and now closed railway of the Indian Ocean island.

Back in France, J. Ara Somohano exhibited covers sent, received by or linked to the Spanish Republicans who took refuge in France after the Retirada ; many covers addressed to internment camp where the French Republic and then Fascist France put them.

Finally, in the court of honor, a guest from sister-region Midi-Pyrénées, Henri Taparel proposed a two time Grand Vermeil collection and lesson on the postal rates of Communist Russia from 1917 to 1923, a time of civil war and economic difficulties. Imagine the government telling you a one kopek stamp is now worth a ruble without overprints!

Mr. Taparel's presentation is highlighted by introductive text placed at the date of new rates to explain what was happening at the time of decision. Something some departemental and regional exhibited collections have trouble to perform on their first two pages (no bibliography or a personal pensum) or as a conclusion. I hope to see it again elsewhere, but you can grasp part of the Russian specialist's knowledge on his personal website.

Sunday 20th March: coin collectors should avoid those.
In French specialised magazine L'Histoire of March 2016, France National Library coin and medal curator Jérôme Jambu analyses the coins of the Islamic State/Daesh/ISIS, that were announced in November 2014 and seems to circulate since June 2015.

He presents the announced characteristics of the coins and the meaning of them in history and propaganda context of the djihadist organisation. Because all coins who were studied in Europe are all faulty to the announced norms, it is supposed that Daesh is creating only faulty described coins to trade them and gain world strong currencies...

To Mr. Jambu, as for oil and archeological items smuggling, buying these coins is helping to finance terrorism.

No comments: