Stamp Out War: Support Ukraine! (2022 Edition)

Oh how lovely!

Indeed, what I have in mind is to organise a 2023 edition of the Ukraine maxicard creation (I don’t think this time I am going to hand-draw a new cover again) involving countries which didn’t end up participating last time. I would definitely love to add this Swiss stamp into this project!

I think I will start a new thread for the second edition to avoid confusion. So please stay tuned!


I have just returned home from my travel and will get back to this project in the coming days. So far I haven’t heard back from any organisation or anyone to whom I had written to seek for collaboration, but I will write up a new project proposal (actually two proposals, one for the auction, the other for the art project) and try again. If anyone should have experience in writing such thing for charity organisation, auction house, and/or art project funding agencies and would like to help me, please message me. I appreciate any form of help! :slight_smile:

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Just to show up to say that this project is very much alive!

I designed a new website and people voted for getting this project a new name.

The name ‘Stamp Out War: Support Ukraine!’ was actually suggested by AI, as I was running out of ideas with words … Cleaver use of the word ‘stamp’ – itsn’t it?

The body of text has been rewritten by AI as well (with a few personal touches by me of course), because I am really not good at this kind of advertising writing.

For the moment I am hesitating to upgrade the site to a paid plan (I would hope that this amount can be donated to Ukraine relief funds). Let’s see how the free version performs. Thank you for sharing.

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Update: I am preparing a few documents that will (hopefully) help the advertisement of Stamp Out War project. As stated on the project’s website, there will be

(1) Auction catalogue: of course, it will contain scans of every card that will be auctionned off.

(2) An online exhibition: aimed for stamp enthusiasts (so no definition of maxicard), it will contains scans of the complete set (30 cards).

(3) A presentation slide: aimed for the general public. I think my work on the slide is pretty much done, after adding explanation about postmark. I hope I don’t need to explain what a (postage) stamp and a postcard are to people who are old enough to read my text!

The slide’s beautiful visual is based on a theme that was made available by Slidesgo team; very generaous of them.

(4) An article that is the reworked version of my article submitted to Terry Watson, chief editor of The Quarterly Journal of the Maximum Card Study Unit, which hopefully will appear in the next issue. It’s adapted for a wider audience, the general public (aka non-collector). The layout has been designed (and I am quite satisfied with the result), only the text needs to be improved. I will keep working on it once I receive some feedbacks. If you are interested in reading the same story again about the genesis of Stamp Out War, I would gladly send you the latest draft in exchange of some comments. :slight_smile:

And if anyone is curious, the cover of all of these documents are based on 2 photographs of mine: The first shows moving clouds in the sky at sunrise; it was taken on the top of Mount Royal in Montreal. The second shows a field in rural Quebec; it was taken, also at sunrise, during my short ‘test bike trip’ around the province to test my camping gears. I was looking for a relevant visual in my harddrive to use, and I happened to stumble upon the second, as-yet unpublished / unprocessed photo that has a nice warm sunlight shade to it. I changed the sky and the image was born!

It will be used as the key visual theme for the 2022 edition.

(Just a passing thought: I can print some postcards based on this composite image to hand out to the Postcrossing community if the demand is ever present.)

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This

plus this

equals to this

– mathematico-artist Linda’s equation :smiley:

P.S. The last image is what I thought could be used in printing Postcrossing-exclusive postcards, if anyone wants it.

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I finished working on my article for the general public. It’s published on the project’s website and ready to be read!

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Very impressive @delda. Creative, well-written, professional presentation. :star2:

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Here is the online exhibition (pdf) I will submit to EXPONET. It contains the scan of the one and the only complete set that will be auctionned off. Enjoy!

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The full catalogue for the auctioning of the 2022 edition of Ukraine support maxicards is finally here!

Here is how the auction will proceed:

14-28 June (Phase 1): 41 singles will be auctioned off. 4-5 cards per day.

After a week of pause,

5 - 12 July (Phase 2): 3 mini-sets and the complete set and potentially the leftover singles will be auctioned off.

There is no guarantee how much singles will be left over. But I should like to give people a second chance to acquire them if there be any.

The arrangement of singles / sets is designed in a way that it’s impossible to make up a mini-set or a complete set by acquiring all the singles. In other words, sets are unique!

For the moment the auction will take place on eBay. However, under extraordinary circumstance, it can end up taking place on another platform. All changes will be announced on the project’s website.

I have to increase the starting price of each card because of all the costs associated with this project that were not entirely in my control. I hope everyone will get what they desire and I look forward to shipping out all the maxicards my global team and I produced in 2022.

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Thank you for sharing this information @delda, and wishing for your project outstanding success! :bouquet:

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I have just finished up scheduling the upcoming auction!

During the first phase of the auction, the first single will begin to appear on eBay. Then at every 4 hours, a new single will be added to the listing.

In July, leftover singles will show up with the 3 mini-sets and the complete set.

Please refer to the catalogue to see the complete list of these 45 auction lots (41 singles + 4 sets).

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According to my survey, eBay was the platform that is the most common denominator for philatelists and the general public. Since I want to allow the maximum amount of people getting the chance to acquire their desired maxicard(s), I chose to host the auction on eBay.

After the eBay auction ends, the sale of any leftover may be entrusted to a Vancouver-based stamp specialist who has been raising funds for Ukraine since the war started; he is also the man behind the idea of Canada’s Help for Ukraine semi-postal stamp release. But I must say that his sale platform seems to gear toward traditional philatelists; I myself don’t find it intuitive to place a bid there.

eBay did give me some troubles during my first attempt at setting up the auction. Originally, I use the project’s email address (stampoutwar@gmail.com) to sign up an account. Then within a few hours, I received a message from eBay saying that this account was permantely suspended and would remain so after I sent out my complaint. I haven’t even created any listing or made any purchase yet!

Our guess is that the word ‘war’ triggered something in eBay’s algorithm, and that they don’t allow any account mentionning that word (eBay never gave me the precise reason for their decision, so we can only guess). For this reason, I am trying to refrain from mentioning the project’s name and putting the project’s website url which contain the sensitive w-word in the new account. I apologise for the inconvenience this may cause, but I don’t want the new account to be suspended too.

Update: The auction is over. Now the remaining cards will be sent off to Vancouver to continue their journey, and I will focus on the production of the 2023 edition of Ukraine support maxicards.

The remaining 2022 Ukraine Support Maxicards resulting from the Stamp Out War project are now entrusted to the Vancouver-based All Nations Stamp and Coin for sale. 56 cards will be listed individually in the coming weeks.

The first week of online auction ended well for these precious maxicards that our global team had produced. All 3 cards were auctioned off at a price that is higher than the estimated $20: $27 for the Austrian variety, $36 for the Canadian (Myrnam) and Ukrainian (1992) varieties.

I am excited to see to that there was actual bidding taking place.

When I was holding the first online auction on eBay, there was no competition, and every bidder got their preferred card(s) at the lowest starting price that is $20/card.

I guess this kind of collectibles sell better in the hands of a specialist. Thanks be given to Brian – the fellow behind the petition urging Canada Post to issue a semi-postal stamp in support of Ukraine!

Second week on sale: Canada (Vegreville), Croatia, Estonia, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, Ukraine (1996).


From the collector’s point of view, it’s more advantage to participate in the eBay auction that orientates towards the general public. But from the charity’s point of view, proceeds are maximised in specialist’s hands.

There will be an eBay auction for the 2023 edition of Ukraine Support Maxicards. Please stay tuned!

This week’s Ukraine Support Maxicards at the highest price realised: $110 for Germany and Ukraine (1996)!!!

That the Ukrainian varieties are in demand is kind of within my expectation, but why is the German one so popular? Does anyone know?

Now I am wondering how my favourite maxicard – the Japanese variety with a sunflower cancel which my participant drove nearly 2 hours to get – will perform.

Every other maxicard was also sold at price exceeding the minimum bid. Good to see people’s generous contribution to Ukraine relief funds didn’t wane with time :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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The result of the 3rd week of auction may be a bit surprising –

This week, the highest price realised ($99) is the French variety created by my philatelic friend Xavier (from The Stamp Forum) !! So far, this is also the second highest price realised overall.

The Ukrainian variety (2001) at $82 placed second (or the third overall).

I thought this French variety was the most boring of all – The village (called Le Temple) where Xavier happened to be was so small and unknown that its name was not even inscribed in the cancel.

I was expecting Ukrainian to always be the most popular varieties. I can’t say to understand the logic of auction …

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Nice results for the 4th week of auction!

We have a new record achieved by Ukraine (2001): $150 !!!

My favourite card of all ended up with the second place: $130 !! @-Makoto- Ai, you must be very proud of yourself and your country!

Germany kept being sold at $110 !

My German friend who helped create this card will be very surprised, as she thought the cancel (called ‘socked-on-nose’) was badly applied :rofl:

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Another Japanese variety sold at $99 this week!

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Canadian Stamp News wrote about the Stamp Out War: Support Ukraine! project in October-November 2023. Here is the printed version of the online article:

And after I entrusted the very first ‘philagraph’ – a new word coined by a number of philatelists to designate a kind of philately-inspired artwork – created on the theme of ‘Help for Ukraine’ for this project to Brian of All Nations Stamp and Coin to sell, Canadian Stamp News did another write-up about this upcoming auction:

I just realised that I didn’t post here the final look of the artwork – after the first-day-of-issue cancel was added to it. Here is the piece of art that will be auctioned off to raise funds for Canada Ukraine Foundation on 25 November 2023:

The 2026 edition of Stamp Out War: Support Ukraine! project will focus on the creation of this kind of artworks that incorporate at least one stamp and one postmark relating to the theme of the work. We are currently recruiting artistically included people to volunteer their talent. Please contact me if you should wish to join this creative initiavite.

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The auctioning of 2022 Ukraine Support Maxicards is now over. Every card was sold. Together on the 2 platforms (eBay and All Nations Stamp and Coin) the auction yielded a total proceed of $1,677.57 CAD, which has been channelled to Canada Ukraine Foundation.

The auction of 2023 maxicards will be held shortly. Please stay tuned!

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Well Done! :tada:
Looking forward to reading more!

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