What are your country's current definitives?

Norwegian definitives are quite dull, and have looked like this for a very long time, as far as I can remember.
I think they come in denominations from 1-10 kr, and then in tens (maybe fives) up till at least 70.

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Pretty!! They are not definitives at all :smile:

They are definitves!

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Switzerland’s current definitives are Railway stations. Image from the Swiss post website. These are the values for local and international postage.

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These are the new definitives stamps in Spain. HM The King Felipe VI. The “tarifa A” por letters in Spain anda “TarifaB” letters to Europe

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They are the longest running definitive series in the world with a bit of variation of course (single colour, multi colour). The first ones were released in 1872.

Cheers,
Wolfgang

Well, doesn’t that just make them even more dull…

Thanks for the info. How come you know this?

I collect stamps and just looked the first release up in a Michel catalogue.

Longest running is also not too difficult since there are not so many countries that issued stamps in 1872 and still are releasing stamps. I think the second longest running def is the Danish “number in a circle with waves”. They were first released in 1905 and mentioned in the thread as well.

Some collectors appreciate the subtle varieties that you get with releases over such a long time. The most interesting in that respect is the Queen Elisabeth II from Great Britain that have also been mentioned earlier in this thread. They are called “Machins” after the designer Arnold Machin who created the image (Machin series - Wikipedia). Even though they have been released only since 1967 rhere are thousands of variations of that stamp with different values, colours, currencies, sizes, paper, perforation, luminosity, position of numbers, slight variations in the head design, security features, se-tenants, … and there are perfins, too. :slight_smile:

To the non collector the summary may well be “boring/dull”. :slight_smile:

Cheers,
Wolfgang

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Thank you for the summary! not boring at all! (but I must admit I am a collector).
I didn’t know that Machins were named after a person.

And I also didn’t know that the Danish “bølgelinie” [waveline] stamps were the second longest running! But I have seen other collectors going in to some amazingly obsessive detail about them. Eg here’s a site showing the 13 variations of a specific year’s issue of a single bølgelinie stamp: https://porsgaard-larsen.com/peter/stamp/varpage/page28.htm

I myself have quite a lot of different ones, but I don’t go much deeper into variants than color, value and the occasional obvious modification.

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These are the actual definitives from Austria. They were issued, no joke, on 1st April 2020, the same day also some postage rates increased.

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Do you have smaller denomination ones, to add 5 cent to a domestic stamp to send to Europe, for instance?

We do have small denomination stamps but they are hard to find. I can only find 15-cent stamps in my town, which makes it 10 cents more than the correct price, so I’ve stopped buying them.
I bought a lot of 1-, 2-, 5- and 10-cents stamps when I visited Florence last year, but I am running out of 5-cent stamps…

I guess I get it, when there are stamps with the correct value they expect people to use those. But then again, they do have a massive philately section on the website, so they know people like stamps and might want to send nice stamps other places than they were meant for.

Unfortunately, the Philately section of the website targets collectors rather than postcrossers. You are only allowed to buy a limited amount of pieces for each stamp, and this limit takes all of your previous orders into account.
It’s almost impossible to buy small denomination stamps on the website, because they were issued several years ago.
I so miss the Postcrossing-friendly website of the French post!

I’m surprised no one from Russia has commented here so far.
Since 2019 we have new definitives, the “Eagles”. In some postoffices you can still find some of the “Kremls”.


Here are examples of three types of Russian definitive stamps of different years:

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Hello everyone,

This is Definitieve Stamps Series 11 from INDIA

  • There are missing 7 stamps. I get only 22.

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Belgian definitives - our king filip

phil-timbre
world-philippe

And we got a few special for abroad

06 COLOMBOPHILIE feuillet

16 LE MANS feuillet

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These are the current definitive series of Sri Lanka.




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Not to be a jerk or anything, but FYI:

Definitives are stamps with a fixed (or definite) monetary value printed on them. In the case of the US, stamps with a fixed dollar or cent value. These will always be worth the dollar/cent amount printed on them.

Forever, Global, Postcard, Additional Ounce, Non-Machineable, etc. are not definitives. They are type of “non-denominated stamps.” Their value isn’t a fixed (or definite) dollar/cent amount. This will always be worth whatever the current rate is for the service printed on them, which is obviously not a fixed amount over time.

Interestingly, before USPS widely adopted “forever” stamps, they frequently issued a type of “non-denominated stamps” which could be considered definitives. These were first-class stamps that were printed with a letter (A, B, C, etc.) instead of the first class rate in cents. USPS issued these when they needed to print stamps ahead of a planned rate increase, but they did not yet know what the new postage rate was going to be. This way they can be prepared with new stamps worth the new rate ready for sale on the day of the rate increase. These stamps retained the original dollar/cent value they were issued for. For example if the “A” stamp was issued for the 25¢ first class postage rate, the “A” stamps will always be worth 25¢. If the year after the first class rate went up to 26¢, the USPS would issue “B” stamps for that rate, and you’d have to add a 1¢ stamps to use any “A” you’d have left.

I really hated those. This was before we carried tiny computers in our pockets with access to the internet. If you didn’t know what the value of an “A” stamp was, you’d have no choice but to drag yourself to the post office, stand in line, and show the stamp to the clerk.

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Post Offices of Republic of Cyprus issue this little stamp of 1 Cyprus cent (until 2007) and 2 Euro cents (after 2008) every year since 1977. It is called refugee stamp and shows a crying woman mourning for her family loss because of the 1974 Turkish invasion. This stamp is used for all the items (parcels, envelopes etc) will be sent by the post offices. Its something more than a simple definitive, is a symbol of faith of all the local people of Cyprus. In the pictures you can see some of the variations that were issued between 2000 and 2021.

Refugee 2000 Refugee 2001 Refugee 2002 Refugee 2005 Refugee 2006 Refugee 2008 Refugee 2009 Refugee 2015 Refugee 2016 Refugee 2017 Refugee 2018 Refugee 2019 Refugee 2020 Refugee 2021

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