I can sent you that stamp via postcard for you if you like.I still have that stamp(But only the Xiyong Castle one left)@helent
Thanks @aegisW, but I think I might already have that stamp, so save it for someone who wants it more.
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I learnt of the artist Valerie Belin from this stunning French stamp from 2019, it won awards and introduced me to her art which I find visually very striking. I love the photomontage juxtaposition of the portrait and flowers, enjoy. Best Wishes,
Derek
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! Great
I noticed that folks found my last post on this subject interesting so I just thought I would add another stamp to the conversation which again taught me a lot.
I will try to be succinct and not too wordy. This time we move to Polynesie Francaise ( French Polynesia ) the Pacific island group of 118 islands and atolls stretching more than 2000 miles and including Tahiti and Bora Bora. The subject is " The Girl from Bora Bora ". The stamp was first issued on the 1st October 1955 as an addition to a 1948 definitive set. It subsequently won Grand Prize for philatelic art. The girl in question was Tumata Teutau who had appeared in a documentary by Landry as part of a Festival dance troupe and it was a scene from that which appealed to the French engraver Pierre Gandon who drew the breathtaking image of the young girl from Bora Bora which subsequently was issued as a stamp. The stamp was also reissued and on the 5th November 2009 appeared re-engraved as part of a sheet ( Feuille or planche ) of 10.
Each stamp within the sheet has a value of 500 F . The “F” refers to the local currency FCFP or CFP ( Colonies Francaises Pacifiques) known as the Pacific Franc. This currency is also used in New Caledonia and Wallis and Futuna. From its inception in 1949 the CFP was pegged to the French franc but this changed on January 1st 1999 when it was pegged to the Euro based on 100 CFP equals 0.838 Euros, remarkably this has never changed since ! This makes the face value of the sheet of 10 stamps at 500 CFP = 5000 CFP or Euros 41.90. ( £36 ) at today’s rates face value. An expensive issue even at the time! The sheet is not common ( Philatelic parlance for I’ve never seen another one and I’ve never seen it used although covers were issued at the time with a single 500CFP stamp.
So again, I learnt a lot, all about the girl from Bora Bora and the currency of the French Pacific, and one day just maybe one day I may find a postcard on my doorstep from Bora Bora !
PS I tried to make it interesting and not too philatelicy ( my word !)
Enjoy, Best Wishes, Derek
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Derek, thank you for sharing this piece of history with us!
The stamp is nice and a meta-stamp of sorts — a stamp within a stamp! 
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A while back I bought some unused vintage stamps to make my letters cuter. Recently I’ve become interested in stamp collecting and pulled them out to look at closer, and these two stamps caught my eye. I had no idea that the US and Soviet Union had a joint mission as far back as 1975! My parents were both born in 1970, and they had never heard of it either. Their only childhood impression of the Soviet Union was about the cold war. It’s so cool that the space programs worked together at a time when tensions between the countries were so high. Clearly I need to read up on my space program history, if I had never heard of such an important event!
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It is a fixed parity.
Fare Rata issues such stamps from time to time, for example this reissue of a stamp from 1964 or this reissue of the first stamp of French Polynesia.
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Thanks for your comments Honzuki and interesting to see other examples of these reissues.
Best Regards, Derek
I’ve received a couple stamps from Belarus with wild animals, they have the latin name on the stamp too so I’ve learned the binomial nomenclature for each animal. Mustela Nivalis = the weasel.
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