XANTHE'S
STAMP MAGAZINE

The following stamp fairs will take place in April. Wednesday   1st April CIRENCESTER  - The Bingham Hall, King Street, GL7 1JT Time: 9.30am - 3.30pm Contact: Simon Collyer, 07966 565151 ( ampfairs.co.uk ) Thursday 2nd April NORTH CORNELLY - The Choral Suite, Green Acre Motel, 111 Heol Fach, CF33 4LH. Time: 9.00am - 1.00pm Contact: Mark Grimsley Stamp Fairs, 07773 566994 Friday 3rd April CANTON (CARDIFF) - St Catherine's Church Hall, Kings Road, CF11 9DE Time: 9.00am - 1

It seems there are World Days for everything. Did you know there is a Lost Sock Memorial Day, an International Strange Music Day and an International Talk Like a Pirate Day? Saturday was World Day for Glaciers. No, I didn't know either but clearly people at Österreichische Post did because they've have produced this stamp to mark it. There is some useful information on the WOPA website: "2025 was designated the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation by the United Nat

Last week Serbia issued some new definitive stamps. They're interesting because they seem to be from three different sets. Two are about pets. The others are about plant life but one design is very different to the rest. The 5 para stamp showing chicory flowers is very similar to the 2025 stamp - in fact, it looks identical to me apart from the fact that the year printed at the bottom has been changed. The others are very different. the old designs have gone apart from the

Royal Mail issued 16 sets in 2025; a year pack would put you back £275.00 As regular readers will see, my reviews of Royal Mail stamps often don't score very highly. And of course there are reasons for that - Royal Mail's recent stamps simply aren't as good as stamps that are being issued by other postal administrations. I'm not saying that Jersey Post, Isle of Man Stamps, La Poste or Posti get everything right but I always look forward to their next issues because I know the

Here's another review and it's another one about ships. Ships on stamps must be like buses - you wait aged for one then two come along at once. This set is from Jersey and will be issued tomorrow. The stamps show passenger vessels that "delve into the vast array of vessels utilised by Jersey in recent history". They are based on illustrations by Martin Mörck. There is a disappointing lack of detailed descriptions on the Jersey Stamps website, but the ships shown are: 82p -

A new Latvian stamp has been issued today. It celebrates a schooner called Daina . WOPA's website tells us about Daina : "The Three‑masted Gaff Schooner Daina was a historic sailing ship built in Latvia in 1924 at the coastal village of Upesgrīva. It was one of the last ocean‑going schooners constructed by local Latvian shipbuilders, crafted by master builder Jānis Strādnieks and completed after his death by Mārtiņš Morgenšterns." Unfortunately, despite being a beautiful s

A few days ago Xanthe wrote a review of the new Easter stamp for Croatia, so today I am reviewing a different Easter stamp, this time from Hungary. As Xanthe has already said, a lot of European countries have a tradition of issuing Easter stamps. This is very different from Croatia's stamp, which showed part of a religious service. Here we have a fun and very colourful stamp showing an egg and Easter bunny made up of flowers. There are also plenty of flowers in the picture. T

Here's a new stamp from Croatia, which was issued yesterday. As you can see, it's a stamp that celebrates Easter. For whatever reason, while we have had Christmas stamps since 1966, Royal Mail has never issued an Easter stamp. Many other European countries have and there have been all kinds of wonderful designs including eggs, bunnies, young animals and religious themes. Croatia is one of those countries that releases a new Easter stamp every year. In the last few years they

I collect all kinds of stamps but I am especially interested in butterflies. Recently I bought a small collection of butterfly stamps that included these. I thought they were very attractive and they're very nicely done. I like the fact they are triangles and the background is plain so the beautiful butterflies really stand out. These are unusual butterflies and I have not seen most of them before. The one on the top left is definitely a Ulysses butterfly and the one on the

There has been a lot of talk about Royal Mail increasing the cost of a First Class stamp to £1.80 from 7th April. Most people think this is too high, and I agree as the jump in price isn't going to persuade many people to write more letters. I get the "cycle" argument - people are using digital communication more, which means there are fewer letters to deliver, which means that the price needs to go up to deliver fewer letters to more addresses, which means that fewer people

Royal Mail's fifth issue of the year will be released on 20th March and celebrates The Lord of the Rings . It's 25 years since the first LOTR film, The Fellowship of the Ring , hit UK cinemas. I believe that, at the time, this was a sensational film that exceeded many people's expectations. It took the fantasy adventures from JRR Tolkien's famous novel and turned it into a gripping film, with believable battle scenes and probably the first realistic digitally-created charact

I was at a stamp fair in Liverpool a few weeks ago. I was looking for something a bit different and I came across these old stamps. I hadn't seen anything like them before and I thought it would be good to buy them and do some research on them later. The first question is: what is a revenue stamp? They are stamps that were not used for postage. Instead, they were issued by "a government to certify that a tax, fee, or duty has been paid on goods or documents". So basically th

The Isle of Man will issue a new set of stamps tomorrow called "From the Oceans to the Stars". I would describe it for you but fortunately I don't have to because Isle of Man Stamps and Coins has done it for me! Here is what they say: The Nicole Stott Mint Set brings together six Isle of Man Post Office stamps exploring our planet and the universe beyond. Each design reflects a different layer of exploration, from the mysterious depths of the oceans to the vast expanse of s

Switzerland will be issuing some new stamps on Monday. It is called Colours of Switzerland and the stamps show... well, lots of colours with different light and shade. The colours have poetic names, like "Snow White, "Alpine Meadow Green", "Glacier Cave Blue", "Larch Gold", "Summit Grey", "Alpine Glow Orange", "Alpine Lake Turquoise" and "Alpine Rose Red". The WOPA website has a short interviewer with the graphic designer, Felix Pfäffli, which I have included below: Where