Austrian 2021 Year Set
Our friend Scott Payton recently spent some time in Vienna and sent this wonderful momento. I opened it Wednesday morning as my special birthday treat, and thank you so much, Scott.
So here is the Austrian 2021 Year Set. It is presented in a tri-fold heavy gauge plastic holder with quality stock sheets and a guide in German and English. USPS has a very long way to go to even come close.
I don't have a working scanner yet, so I used my trusty-rusty phone. Forgive the glare.
The Dominic Thiem stamp is made of tennis ball felt. The embroidered mask stamp is from FFP2 mask material. The winter mitten is of canvas. Again, Scott, your generosity is wonderful. Thank you very much.
So here is the Austrian 2021 Year Set. It is presented in a tri-fold heavy gauge plastic holder with quality stock sheets and a guide in German and English. USPS has a very long way to go to even come close.
I don't have a working scanner yet, so I used my trusty-rusty phone. Forgive the glare.
The Dominic Thiem stamp is made of tennis ball felt. The embroidered mask stamp is from FFP2 mask material. The winter mitten is of canvas. Again, Scott, your generosity is wonderful. Thank you very much.
Comments
(and, way cool gift, there, Scottie Boy!)
I do have a NH copy of the souvenir sheet issued in 2004 honoring Swarovski Crystal, with six crystals affixed to each of the two stamps in the sheet. Impossible to mount in an album in NH condition without the crystals tearing up the clear font cover of a typical stamp mount. I am sure that they will eventually cause problems with the album page in front as the crystals will punch through the paper.
From looking through my Scott catalog, Austria started issuing more unusual material stamps in 2005 with an embroidered stamp. In 2008 a stamp was issued that was made of soccer ball polyurethane. Another embroidered stamp was issued in 2009. Embroidery was affixed to a paper stamp in 2010. A porcelain tile stamp was issued in 2014 (bet that would do a number on the automatic stamp sorting equipment). A stamp consisting of leather with glass crystals affixed was issued in 2015. Another embroidered stamp was issued in 2016. A wood veneer stamp was issued in 2017. Another embroidered stamp was issued in 2018. And that is a far as my Scott catalog goes. All were self-adhesive stamps.
2018 this Tyrolean hat.
2016 a glass tile.
Below is the initial release of this issue. Later it was overprinted with a new value. Rather than just overprinting the value on this stamp with a bar and printing the new value on the stamp, the old value was overprinted with the head of a cow. And the cow itself was given an overprint of stripes that made it look like a zebra. A set of eight definitive stamps that were issued a few years before were all overprinted in just as imaginative ways. Wish I had copies of the overprints, but I don't. Check out Scott #1979-1986, they are all pictured in the catalog.
You can scare the kids with this one.
I don't know what it is, but I find this one unsettling.
Austria was one of the counties that I collected when I first started specializing with a few counties. They stamps were produced so well. The engraved stamps, of which there were many, were just beautiful. They put the USPS stamp production from the 1970's and 1980's to absolute shame.
"Tower, which is terminal 2?"
"Have you never been to Frankfort, sir?"
"I have, but it was dark and we couldn't stay long."
Interesting that the Austrians seem to be the ones to recognize them.