My first philatelic passport from Japan

My fifth addition to my collection of philatelic passports this year arrived in the post today.  It's the first one in my collection from Japan. It's in absolutely pristine condition, considering it's 35 years old. I love the bright red cover.

The opening pages show you how to use the passport and the original owner followed the instructions!

Inside there is a unique collection of stamps from around the world. Here are some that caught my eye, including this graphic depiction of an atrocity commemorated on a stamp by Iran.

Mauritius paid tribute to the tragic dodo with a whimsical cartoon stamp and a commemorative cancellation postmark. 

Meanwhile, the USA post office was already in the Christmas spirit (in November!) and Santa Claus was in their special postmark.

I really enjoy collecting these passports. They are quirky and I never know exactly what I will find inside. 

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. 

Another philatelic passport arrives

My third new philatelic passport of the year, and the 30th overall in my collection, has arrived. It was issued at a big stamp exhibition in France in 1999, I bought it because it had a Moomin stamp on the first country page!

Moominmamma gets to be the first stamp in the passport because the creators of the passport listed Aland, the small stamp-issuing islands off Finland, first. Finland is on the same page and it's a Finnish stamp. 

Whoever collected stamps in this passport had a whimsical approach. They seemed to pick stamps with cartoons and cute animals. Here are some more highlights:

A great miniature sheet from Germany.

Hang-gliding Santa Claus from Belarus

I'd never seen this Faroese stamp before.

Gabon had a shiny hologram on their stamp, celebrating 150 years of the first French postage stamp.

And a bonus item, a loose 'show card' issued by Monaco. This is the sort of freebie that postal agencies give out at big international exhibitions. It was tucked into the passport so I will keep it in there.

I really enjoy looking through these passports, seeing all the different stamps and postmarks. Every one is unique in its own way. I have two from this exhibition now. This is now my favourite because the other one doesn't have a Moomin stamp. 

Read about the two passports I added to my collection in March. 

New additions to my collection of philatelic passports

Philatelic passports are issued at stamp exhibitions. Collectors stick stamps in them and get them 'cancelled' or postmarked. Sometimes the postmarks are as interesting as the stamps (see this example I posted about in 2023). I did a presentation about them to my stamp collecting association a few years back too.

In the past couple of weeks I've received a couple of new philatelic passports, including my first one from India. That was issued in 2011. I also got an American one released in 1996 when the big international stamp exhibition was in Atlants, where the Olympics were being held that year.

The Olymphilex passport is interesting because it includes a lot of detail in the write up of the countries inside - both their philatelic heritage and their Olympic performances. 

There's a nice commemorative cancel on the USA page.

Meanwhile whoever owned this passport chose a Romanian miniature sheet that was too big for the space where it was meant to be stuck in.

The gymnast on the stamp in the middle of the sheet is Nadia Comăneci, who was the first ever gymnast to score a perfect 10 at the Olympics (in Montreal in 1976). 

There was also a British Olympics stamp in the passport, but the postmark is upside down. Come on, Royal Mail employee, you had one job!

There was a supplement issued for the passport, which also has a few stamps in.

The Monaco stamp in the supplement also ticks another interest of mine - baseball on stamps!

The Indian passport is much smaller. The heyday for these style passports was definitely the 90s when stamp collecting was much more popular and every big show had a big passport. This has died off now, as fewer national postal administrations go to the big shows (like Europhilex that I visited last year) and many of them don't bother with passports any more.

Philatelic passports have been a lot thinner in the 21st century. But there are some interesting countries in the Indiapex passport, and some interesting stamps. I particularly liked this Danish stamp with a cartoon of a kid who's foot has turned into a sock puppet.

A cool rabbit on the Malaysian postmark.

A mischievous looking truck on the Swedish postmark (over a rather dull looking owl).

My favourite stamp in the passport is this round one from the Pitcairn Islands. I'm a sucker for round stamps. There's a lovely flower on the cancellation too. Unfortunately there is a huge mistake on the page with two spelling errors in the heading rendering them as the "Pitcrain Inlands."

And the British page is very weird. An old, pre-decimalisation stamp, that was issued to celebrate the European Free Trade Agreement (EFTA) in 1967! 

I'm guessing Royal Mail didn't officially go to Indiapex, as the cancellation is by Stanley Gibbons, one of the world's best known stamp dealers. They must have decided it was a useful way for them to use up some old stock!

Long hot summer - June 2025

June is probably my favourite month of the year. Long nights. Warm weather. It's usually busy. And it definitely was this year! 

It marked the end of the football season. I saw both Wales women's and men's team playing within a few days of each other to round off my season.

One of the big life events of the month was replacing dear old Marco the Polo. I'm now droving a Mazda 3, in "soul red" (their name for it) and we've called him Vincent. 

Here's a picture of Vincent looking suave and a teeny bit sandy on our holiday in North Wales at the end of the month.

My first long distance trip in Vincent was to Swindon because the British Thematic Association was holding its AGM at Swinpex, the annual stamp show of the local philatelic society. This year we had a presentation about daffodils, but there was surprisingly little Welsh content in the display. There was some, though.

Speaking of flowers, I went along to the Grangetown History Society's talk about Grange Gardens on the park's 130th Anniversary.

It was very interesting seeing pictures of the Gardens when they were newly opened, and also when it was turned into vegetable patches during World War 2.

There was even a cake, provided by the Friends of Grange Gardens. 

I've already mentioned our week on holiday in North Wales, where we encountered butterflies on Anglesey and played underground golf! 

But on the way back we stopped in Shrewsbury. Joy, our eldest niece, had her birthday during the week before we popped in, so we were able to give her some presents.

She so big now!

We arrived back home with just two days of the month left. On the last Sunday of the month we went to a big print fair at Chapter Arts Centre. 

I really liked this big print, but decided I didn't have the wall-space to do it justice!

And then on the last night of June, I accepted Sara's invitation to an event with Rhun Ap Iorweth, leader of Plaid Cymru. He was a very engaging speaker and came across as honest and realistic. I liked him. (He was funny too. When I told him I'd driven past his office in Llangefni a couple of days before, he told me I should have popped in!)

Sara is standing as one of the Plaid candidates in her area in next year's Senedd election. It was great to meet some of the other Plaid members who will be helping her try to get elected. 

And that was a wrap for a busy month!

Europhilex

My first stamp show of 2025 and it was a big one. Europhilex at the NEC. I visited yesterday (Friday 9th May).

Given this was a large international exhibition, I was expecting a bit more from it. There was a large number of competitive presentations, including some great thematic exhibits. But overall, the hall wasn't full and there were fewer dealers than I was expecting. Unlike previous international exhibitions there didn't seem to be much presence from postal agencies from other countries either. 

My favourite display was an excellent analysis of diabetes, with a huge amount of material related to the history and science around it. 

The main reason I went to Europhilex was because the British Thematic Association were holding a meeting. This included a presentation about postcards from North Borneo followed by an opportunity for members to show some of their stamps. 

I took some bits from my collection of the Statue of Liberty on stamps. There was a real mix of other topics ranging from puffins to mistakes on stamps (like depicting Christopher Columbus holding a telescope, which hadn't been invented when he set sail).

I didn't buy much, but I did find a stamp featuring my favourite baseball player, Tony Gwynn. As it was Tony's birthday, I had to buy it!

I also got something for Cathy...

Home runs and holidays - June 2024

June was another very busy month. I've blogged about some of the major highlights already but here's my traditional end of the month review.  

The big sporting event this month was a day watching baseball in London, courtesy of my friend Gawain. This is the first month since July last year that I haven't been to any football matches. But I have been watching the European Championships. 

The Euros have been pretty good, overall, so far. Wales fell at the final hurdle back in the spring and didn't qualify but Scotland made it. They had a torrid time, though, and were on the plane back home after three games. England qualified unconvincingly from their group and needed some very late goals on the last evening in June to extend their Euros into July. 

I've also been to two stamp fairs, starting a new collecting theme - pangolins. My stamp collecting mojo comes and goes and I hadn't bought any for ages, but I enjoyed getting back on the hunt for things. I'm trying to collect stamps from countries where pangolins live and so far have a good mix. 

Recent additions

The stamp fairs and baseball were good distractions from a difficult ongoing work situation. I won't go into details but the 'change programme' stepped up a gear in the first week of June. We are now facing a few months of disruption. 

It felt like a good time to take a short break from work. So I was glad we had booked a week's holiday in North Wales with my mum and a friend. I've already blogged about it - with lots of photos. Castles, beaches, steam trains - all the staples of a holiday in Cymru, with the added unexpected bonus of sunshine and zero rain!

At the end of the holiday we had a weekend in Shrewsbury, which was great timing as my eldest niece, Joy, was celebrating a milestone birthday - she's now a bona fide teenager and had the balloons to prove it.

Hard to believe it's 13 years since Joy's appearance turned me into an uncle. (I blogged about it back in 2011!) 

We also got to see other members of the family, who were all delighted to see us!

And that marks the halfway point in 2024!