Here we have a very small selection of stamp sheets from Great Britain recently added to PostBeeld’s vast stock. Please visit PostBeeld’s website for a more comprehensive view of many more. Great Britain 2012 In 2012 Great Britain hosted the Olympic Games, previously held in London in 1948. The sheet features sports contested at the event. Great Britain 2020 The British writer and physician Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (1859-1930) created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for A Study in Scarlet, the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. T ..read more

There were so many great stamps issued by France last year I find it difficult to make a small selection for this article! Above and below: could these be the first postage stamps depicting electric bicycles? Please enlighten me if this is not the case. La Poste has partnered with the Ligue pour la Protection des Oiseaux (League for the Protection of Birds) for this 4th edition of the philatelic series “The Earth and Men” in order to warn of the consequences of light pollution on wildlife; and some creatures so threatened are featured on this stamp sheet. The most frequent impact concerns in ..read more

This year, 2024, is the Year of the Wood Dragon and the Chinese New Year, which begins on February 10th, will be celebrated in dozens of countries across the World. The dragon is considered to be one of the luckiest and most powerful animals in the Chinese 12-year zodiac cycle. There are five types of Dragons, each with different characteristics: In Chinese element theory, each zodiac sign is associated with one of five elements: Gold (Metal), Wood, Water, Fire, or Earth, which means that a Wood Dragon, for example, comes once in a 60-year cycle. The Netherlands 2024 We begin with a quite ..read more

Great Britain 2023 In 2023 Great Britain’s Royal Mail issued various philatelic items to commemorate the remarkable 70-year career of the Welsh-born singer Dame Shirley Bassey. Shown above is the cover of a Royal Mail Prestige Stamp Book, an informative 24-page publication written by British music journalist and broadcaster Lucy O’Brien. The book tells the story of Dame Shirley Bassey’s journey from humble beginnings to global superstar. It’s packed with photography, quotes and stories. The Prestige Stamp Book includes three pages incorporating the eight main stamps and the Miniature Sheet sta ..read more

Staff at Freestampmagazine and PostBeeld wish our readers and buying customers a very happy time over the Christmas and New Year period. Christmas (from the Anglo-Saxon: Cristesmæsse, meaning “Christ’s Mass”) is the annual festival that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, observed most commonly on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people around the world. Each year we show examples of Christmas stamps from various countries. Some 2023 stamp offerings are shown here. USA 2023 I’m sure many people will recognise the subject of the four USA stamps above – S ..read more

PostBeeld has, in the last few weeks, acquired an enormous amount of stamps from private collections and is in the process of adding the items to its already incredibly vast and varied stock. This will provide a great opportunity for PostBeeld’s customers to possibly find a stamp that fits their collection or topic. I fully recommend frequent visits to the postbeeld.com and freestampcatalogue.com websites to view the daily additions to stock and the weekly discount offers. There follows a brief look at a small selection of the added stamps: Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen 1965 In 1965 the Mutaw ..read more

Universalmuseum Joanneum Austria 2011 The two Austrian stamps in this article feature the Universalmuseum Joanneum in Graz, Austria, considered the biggest of its kind in Central Europe, comprising nine buildings of historic interest available for its five million items in 20 collections. The Kunsthaus’s futuristic design has likened it to a baby hippo, sea slug, porcupine, whale and a “Friendly Alien”. The building seen here was completed and opened in 2003. The museum was founded in 1811 by Archduke Johann of Austria (1782-1859) who, jointly with the estates of Styria, set up the Joanne ..read more

In 2018 the United Nations Postal Administration issued a beautifully-illustrated set of stamps to celebrate 25 years of its Endangered Species series featuring 12 threatened flora and fauna species. United Nations Vienna 2018 The €0.80 U.N. Vienna stamps here above show the leafless fat-stemmed succulent plant Hoodia (Hoodia pilifera); a frog native to Madagascar, the Malagasy painted Mantella (Mantella madagascariensis); an Assam roofed turtle (Pangshura sylhetensis) found in parts of India and Bangladesh; and a zebra seahorse (Hippocampus zebra), found only in waters near Australia. United ..read more

This article was originally published in December 2013: The United States Postal Service (USPS, which is heavily in debt) is destroying an entire run of stamps because the activities illustrated on three of the stamps in the fifteen stamp series have been deemed unsafe by the Presidential Council for Fitness, Sports and Nutrition. The stamps were made to support a campaign driven by First Lady Michelle Obama to fight childhood obesity. The stamps in question depicted children performing a cannonball dive, skateboarding without kneepads, and doing a headstand without a helmet. USA 2013 The uns ..read more

Here we have a very small selection of stamps recently added to PostBeeld’s vast stock. Please visit PostBeeld’s website for a more comprehensive view of newly-added items. Laos 1961 We begin with a few examples taken from a sizeable addition of stamps from Laos. The stamps above, from 1961, feature the Pathet Lao, officially the Lao People’s Liberation Army, a communist political movement and organisation, formed in Laos in 1950. The group succeeded in gaining political power in 1975, after the Laotian Civil War. Laos 2003 Then in 2003 the above stamps were produced with the theme ‘Stop Hunti ..read more