My second philatelic passport acquisition in a month

A couple of weeks back I blogged about a new philatelic passport, and now I'm blogging again about another one! This time it's a passport issued for an exhibition in New Zealand, way back in 1990!

These passports don't pop up on eBay very often and when they do they tend to come along in clusters. It's the fourth passport I've added to my collection in 2026 and the oldest one I've bought this year.

The opening stamp features Goldie, the cartoon kiwi mascot of the Commonwealth Games that were being held in New Zealand that year.

Whoever completed this passport included a couple of miniature sheets issued to commemorate the Games. Goldie appears again.

How old is this passport? Well, the USSR had sent their stamp bureau to exhibit. This asteroid is maybe a premonition of the extinction events that would see the Soviet Union disappear just a year or so later. 

There's always one stamp in a passport that just grabs my attention. This time its a lovely stamp from New Caledonia marking the bicentenary of the 1879 French Revolution. There's a smudge on it from the cancellation on the opposite page, but that doesn't detract too much from the stamp.

One of the things I love about these passports is that I never know exactly what stamps or postmarks I will find inside them. It feels a bit like a treasure hunt, never knowing quite what will be unearthed. 

Things you see in Newcastle: "Bones" - recycled vinyl records from the USSR

Last year, Cathy and I visited Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. While there we had a few hours in the centre of the city and visited the art exhibition space linked to the Baltic. The exhibition was 'The art of the needle' - the art of, or inspired by, vinyl records.

As you can imagine from an art exhibition, there was a mix of stuff there. Most of it was easily dismissable hipsterish nonsense - who wants to go to a four hour performance of a DJ playing scratched and warped records? But there was one bit that really captured my imagination - a display of "Bones", Soviet-era bootlegs of banned Western albums, printed on the only ready source of vinyl: used medical x-ray sheets.

With the records back-lit, you can see what recycled vinyl looks like. I imagine the audio quality is terrible, but really, these are display pieces.

This prompted me to think about 'art'. There were plenty of intentional art pieces in the exhibition. People had gone out and purposefully tried to use vinyl records or record sleeves to make something else. But none of those things wowed me the way these did. What I find interesting is that these discs are repurposing something else - in this case medical images that are no longer needed - and in the process are creating something unique and, in it's own way, beautiful. But they are a by-product of a process of sharing art and weren't intended as art themselves, and yet, they were displayed in an art exhibition and were easily the most evocative exhibit.

So, what does that tell us about art? That the best stuff happens by accident? That art is a by-product of inventive minds solving problems? That artists are often trying too hard to make art, instead of focusing their intentions on making something useful that turns out to be art?