As could have been read on Fepanews a year ago the Netherlands has a new type of postal stationery as of January 2019.
It is a standard postcard size (A6) card with an imprinted stamp, meant to be for shipment of the Dutch monthly ‘Filatelie’ in which the Dutch federation and FEPA-member KNBF is publishing their official announcements.
This Magazinekaart was issued by the other Dutch postal operator Sandd. Dutch UPD postal operator PostNL has taken over Sandd as per February 1st 2020 and merged the two companies together as PostNL. This means that Sandd is completely from the market.
The magazine cards were – as was for the year 2019 – produced as a set in December 2018 for the entire year. In 2019 the topic was coat of arms of places where the month after a philatelic event took place. Not only Dutch places, but also abroad. In total eleven different cards.
The theme for 2020 is leap year. Persons (international) born or died on February 29th.
The first two issues were still fully under Sandd operation, as the February issue was already delivered to the postal operator in January.
The March issue was however fully PostNL business. There have been major discussions with PostNL who were not enthusiastic about the idea of having a Magazinekaart as address card for the magazine. It could also cause problems as the sorting centres and machines could not handle these cards with imprinted stamp. As the Magazinekaart was part of the original contract with Sandd, PostNL had to find a solution and now the cards for 2020 (with Sandd imprint) are used together with a PostNL postmark! This will be done for the entire year 2020.
The value of the imprinted stamp is € 2,10 for 2020 and was € 1,55 for 2019.
Design mistakes happen from time to time with stamps and so it happened by the first Magazinekaart of 2020. Designer Annemarie Zijl had made a mistake which one of the keen readers of Filatelie found out. The first person on the card is Alessandro Farnese, Pope Paul III (1468-1549). Born on February 29, 1468. By mistake the wrong Alessandro Farnese (1545-1592) was pictured! He was Duke of Parma.
The wrong and right picture of the Alessandro Farnese.
A new Magazinekaart was produced with the right picture.
I’ve been locked down now for about four weeks. The premises of the university I work are closed. My days are usually full of meetings and discussions, so working at my kitchen table is no problem, except for my back. I sit down too much.
These difficult times have made me work long days. Running a library with no physical space is not easy. That leaves me little time of my own. But instead of doing sports or other useful matters I have continued working with my computer. My passion is postage rates and spreadsheets.
My current work station.
I love big data. Creating data sets and analyzing them is something which really helps me get focused and forget my work, cleaning and everything else which I really should do.
The mystery of single stamp postal items has puzzled me for years. Would it be possible to find out all possible different single usages of some certain stamp? In order to find this out I started to fill in spreadsheets and calculate the different possibilities.
My test set consists of 38 different denominations of Finland model 1930 definitive series ranging from 40 pennies to 300 markkas. The model was in use from 1930 to 1962. It includes the second world war period and its aftermath with big inflation, which led to many increases in postage rates. This is a real challenge.
Second rate letter, Lappeenranta 29.9.1947, letter 25 mk, registration 10 mk, express fee 20 mk, insurance fee 35 mk, and advice of delivery fee 10 mk, total 100 mk. Source: Finnish postage rates 1875 – 2001, p. 92.
My original plan was to calculate all possible rates for the model 1930 definitives found in the book called “Finnish postage rates 1875 – 2001”. In addition to basic rates I wanted to include all combinations of additional fees. These are registration, express mail, insurance fee, cash on delivery, home delivery, advice of delivery, and airmail fee. However, that proved to be a lot bigger task I anticipated. No surprise, I would say.
So far I have tackled the domestic rates. I have been able to calculate about 1,1 million rates, and I assume I am about half way through. If I want to include all foreign and special agreement rates into my research, I estimate I have to calculate close to 10 million rates altogether.
The work is pretty straightforward. First I have to key in all needed basic rates into spreadsheets. The combinations can be calculated with basic functions. The fun part has been to create algorithms for filtering out the single stamp usages. With trial and error I have succeeded to do that.
Spreadsheets may look boring, but they contain a lot of information!
The result so far is that out of all possible postage rates, about 0,5% can be paid with single stamps. Naturally, the most common single usages are the ones the stamps were designed for like domestic letter or registered letter. More interesting cases are combinations of different additional fees. However, these are in most cases theoretical, because these type of items cannot be found in real life.
So what is the use of this kind of research? Very little in practice, it is more like basic research. But at least it gives an idea of the variety of single usages theoretically available. And you never know what implications basic research creates, when other people gets hold of this kind of analysis!
https://fepanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Rate-nerd-3-scaled-e1587018482816.jpg133200Ari Muhonenhttps://fepanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/fepanews_logo-107x138-1.pngAri Muhonen2020-04-16 09:28:232024-04-21 16:46:59Postage rate nerd’s lock down hobby
We have just received this message from Murat Hazinedaroglu of the Turkish Federation.
April 23th 2020 is one of the most significant anniversaries of the Turkish Republic’s history as it is the Centenary of Inauguration of the Turkish Grand National Assembly. We planned to celebrate this centenary with two separate exhibitions in Ankara, one of which was to be international. Unfortunately, we have had to cancel them due to the coronavirus outbreak.
We are not able to organize exhibitions physically at present but we have social media and virtual environments. Within this scope, we have decided to organize an e-philately exhibition through Facebook.
Our April 23th2020 Centenary of the Inauguration of the Turkish Grand National Assembly E- Philately Exhibitionwill be held between April 20 and May 4, 2020.
The rules and key aspects are as follows:
This e-exhibition does not have an official characteristic. It is held in order to have fun, make use of the time and increase the morale.
The collections will be uploaded to the special site prepared for this exhibition on Facebook. There is no limit on exhibit types by class. All types of exhibit classes including the experimental ephemera class are welcome.
The collections to be exhibited will have at least 1 frame and at most 5 frames. They should be sent to filateliakademisi@gmail.com in jpg format (or PDF) by using the Wetransfer program and will be uploaded to the specific Facebook page by the organization committee. Each participant can submit his/her three collections to the address mentioned above by 20 April 2020.
Exhibits will not formally be judged. Judgment will be based on the appreciation votes of participants. Each participant will be allowed to vote for three exhibits he/she likes, other than his/her own.
The votes will be kept confidential. Only the three highest-voted exhibits will be announced.
All participants will receive a diploma and lemon cologne (80 degrees) will be awarded to the highest-voted exhibits.
We look forward to your participation in the electronic exhibition, which we have implemented for the first time and is mandated by the conditions of this constrained period.
We send our thanks to the Turkish Federation for taking this interesting initiative and wish them every success for their e-exhibition.
https://fepanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/fepanews_logo-107x138-1.png00Bill Hedleyhttps://fepanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/fepanews_logo-107x138-1.pngBill Hedley2020-04-15 20:38:072024-04-21 16:47:20Turkish Federation organises E-Philately Exhibition from 23 April. Entries are invited.
Dutch PostNL legalizes Magazinekaart
As could have been read on Fepanews a year ago the Netherlands has a new type of postal stationery as of January 2019.
It is a standard postcard size (A6) card with an imprinted stamp, meant to be for shipment of the Dutch monthly ‘Filatelie’ in which the Dutch federation and FEPA-member KNBF is publishing their official announcements.
This Magazinekaart was issued by the other Dutch postal operator Sandd. Dutch UPD postal operator PostNL has taken over Sandd as per February 1st 2020 and merged the two companies together as PostNL. This means that Sandd is completely from the market.
The magazine cards were – as was for the year 2019 – produced as a set in December 2018 for the entire year. In 2019 the topic was coat of arms of places where the month after a philatelic event took place. Not only Dutch places, but also abroad. In total eleven different cards.
The theme for 2020 is leap year. Persons (international) born or died on February 29th.
The first two issues were still fully under Sandd operation, as the February issue was already delivered to the postal operator in January.
The March issue was however fully PostNL business. There have been major discussions with PostNL who were not enthusiastic about the idea of having a Magazinekaart as address card for the magazine. It could also cause problems as the sorting centres and machines could not handle these cards with imprinted stamp. As the Magazinekaart was part of the original contract with Sandd, PostNL had to find a solution and now the cards for 2020 (with Sandd imprint) are used together with a PostNL postmark! This will be done for the entire year 2020.
The value of the imprinted stamp is € 2,10 for 2020 and was € 1,55 for 2019.
Design mistakes happen from time to time with stamps and so it happened by the first Magazinekaart of 2020. Designer Annemarie Zijl had made a mistake which one of the keen readers of Filatelie found out. The first person on the card is Alessandro Farnese, Pope Paul III (1468-1549). Born on February 29, 1468. By mistake the wrong Alessandro Farnese (1545-1592) was pictured! He was Duke of Parma.
The wrong and right picture of the Alessandro Farnese.
A new Magazinekaart was produced with the right picture.
Hans Kraaibeek
Postage rate nerd’s lock down hobby
I’ve been locked down now for about four weeks. The premises of the university I work are closed. My days are usually full of meetings and discussions, so working at my kitchen table is no problem, except for my back. I sit down too much.
These difficult times have made me work long days. Running a library with no physical space is not easy. That leaves me little time of my own. But instead of doing sports or other useful matters I have continued working with my computer. My passion is postage rates and spreadsheets.
My current work station.
I love big data. Creating data sets and analyzing them is something which really helps me get focused and forget my work, cleaning and everything else which I really should do.
The mystery of single stamp postal items has puzzled me for years. Would it be possible to find out all possible different single usages of some certain stamp? In order to find this out I started to fill in spreadsheets and calculate the different possibilities.
My test set consists of 38 different denominations of Finland model 1930 definitive series ranging from 40 pennies to 300 markkas. The model was in use from 1930 to 1962. It includes the second world war period and its aftermath with big inflation, which led to many increases in postage rates. This is a real challenge.
My original plan was to calculate all possible rates for the model 1930 definitives found in the book called “Finnish postage rates 1875 – 2001”. In addition to basic rates I wanted to include all combinations of additional fees. These are registration, express mail, insurance fee, cash on delivery, home delivery, advice of delivery, and airmail fee. However, that proved to be a lot bigger task I anticipated. No surprise, I would say.
So far I have tackled the domestic rates. I have been able to calculate about 1,1 million rates, and I assume I am about half way through. If I want to include all foreign and special agreement rates into my research, I estimate I have to calculate close to 10 million rates altogether.
The work is pretty straightforward. First I have to key in all needed basic rates into spreadsheets. The combinations can be calculated with basic functions. The fun part has been to create algorithms for filtering out the single stamp usages. With trial and error I have succeeded to do that.
Spreadsheets may look boring, but they contain a lot of information!
The result so far is that out of all possible postage rates, about 0,5% can be paid with single stamps. Naturally, the most common single usages are the ones the stamps were designed for like domestic letter or registered letter. More interesting cases are combinations of different additional fees. However, these are in most cases theoretical, because these type of items cannot be found in real life.
So what is the use of this kind of research? Very little in practice, it is more like basic research. But at least it gives an idea of the variety of single usages theoretically available. And you never know what implications basic research creates, when other people gets hold of this kind of analysis!
Turkish Federation organises E-Philately Exhibition from 23 April. Entries are invited.
We have just received this message from Murat Hazinedaroglu of the Turkish Federation.
April 23th 2020 is one of the most significant anniversaries of the Turkish Republic’s history as it is the Centenary of Inauguration of the Turkish Grand National Assembly. We planned to celebrate this centenary with two separate exhibitions in Ankara, one of which was to be international. Unfortunately, we have had to cancel them due to the coronavirus outbreak.
We are not able to organize exhibitions physically at present but we have social media and virtual environments. Within this scope, we have decided to organize an e-philately exhibition through Facebook.
Our April 23th 2020 Centenary of the Inauguration of the Turkish Grand National Assembly E- Philately Exhibition will be held between April 20 and May 4, 2020.
The rules and key aspects are as follows:
We look forward to your participation in the electronic exhibition, which we have implemented for the first time and is mandated by the conditions of this constrained period.
We send our thanks to the Turkish Federation for taking this interesting initiative and wish them every success for their e-exhibition.