Postal Administrations and Stamped Envelopes

Just finished reading an interesting article by Eric regarding receiving his philatelic order packaged in an envelope with real postage stamps. The order was placed with Guinness Post. As many of you come to realize nowadays, most postal administrations simply stopped using stamps on their philatelic orders, which is a real turn down to us collectors. It is like the farmer who sells apples does not eat his own apple. I remember years ago when I used to pick up my new issue bulletins in a stamped envelopes from Hong Kong Post, and religiously cut out the stamps for my collection. Some of the stamps from that period made a long lasting impression on me, such as the jasmine tea scented stamps, the water-drop shaped stamps, the film stars stamps and all the different varieties of pictorial cancellation . I think Hong Kong post had never realized that the stamps they put on the covers were actually an extended form of advertisement and spoke more about their products than just postage.

Of the postal administrations I know that still use stamps on their envelopes are: UNPA, Portugal, Sweden, Greenland, St. Helena and now Guinness Post. There might be others out there that I didn't know about, so I hope more people will write about their experiences with the postal administrations.

I came to know about the postal administration of St. Helena because of an article written by Jimmy, another prolific blogger about stamps. This really tells you how information has been flowing around when people speaks up about the hobby. He showed a cover that he received from St. Helena when he ordered some stamps from them. I was amazed by the stamps they used on the cover so I ordered some stamps from them to try it out. Indeed my envelope came with stamps on it.

The UNPA also likes to use stamps on their orders. Most of the time, they even apply FD cancellations. Sweden doesn’t really send their stuff with stamps, but on a few occasions, I’ve gotten envelopes from them with stamps. Hope someone will talk about their experience with Sweden.

Greenland uses beautiful stamps, I love the eagle stamps they used on their international mail.

I'll post some pictures when I come back from my trip to Canada!