I first came upon the language of stamps in the book “To The Letter” by Simon Garfield a couple of years ago (a highly recommendable book, BTW).
After I started with Postcrossing, I made a postcard about this too.
Do you sell this postcard anywhere?
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. I’ve just been reading this thread on the language of stamps, I knew a little bit about it, it seems a bit like the language of flowers…It’s lovely getting postcrossing cards with interesting and pretty stamps, but recently I’ve been having a problem , not with the cards I receive , but those I send!
I’m based in Spain. The choice of postage stamps seems very limited, at least where I live.and I always have to ask if they have any real stamps available rather than the plain, black on white printed off adhesive stickers which are in common use. If I’m lucky they go off somewhere ( this the main post office) and come back a few minutes later with a real stamp or two. But sometimes there are only the printed off sticker stamps… Last time I went this sticker had increased in size, to 10 by 4 cms…which takes up a lot of space on a written postcard !!! especially if you’d just left space for a stamp…or two… I’ll have to change my approach to stamp buying here!!.. in the meantime anyone who receives a postcard from me, please don’t make any assumptions or interpretations re those plain black and white stickers I don’t like them either!!.
When PostCrossing, I try to remember to put the stamps on first for this very reason…sometimes I forget.
I’m horrible at getting the stamps to be straight. And I often put stamps on sideways. I’ve even put stamps upside down when I could read the fine print on them. What is worse, I put the stamps on first and I still make these mistakes. But I would love a postcard with this language of stamps information. Anyone thinking of making one?
