cover from the USA

On 20th November I got not only a postcard but also a cover from the USA.

The cover was cancelled once again with the special Postcrossing postmark from the 6th SW Meet-up held for International Postcard Week, World Postcard Day and World Post Day. The two stamps on the right are from a set of five about Post Office Murals (issued 10-04-2019) and the other shows Master Yoda (issued 25-10-2007).

In the cover were three nice collectibles: a big sheet about Lunar New Year, a cover about the 500th anniversary of San Juan on Puerto Rico and a Star Wars Droids FDC.

Thank You very much Sam-Quito!

USA: Vader's Little Princess

On 24th June I got three postcards: two from the USA and one from Austria.

One of the cards from the USA shows another illustration of Vader's Little Princess by Jeffrey Brown. This one is just hilarious!

Three Star Wars stamps were used. Those two on the left show the Millennium Falcon, Chewbacca and Han Solo and are from the set of fifteen celebrating the 30th anniversary of Star Wars (issued 25-05-2007). The stamp on the right on the contrary is from the recent set about Star Wars Droids (issued 04-05-2021). It shows L3-37, a fighter for droid rights and pilot working with Lando Calrissian who was introduced in the anthology movie Solo. After her death she was uploaded as navigational system of the Millennium Falcon.

Thank You very much Audrey!

USA: Miami

On 15th June I got three postcards: two from the USA and one from Germany.

One of the cards from the USA shows Miami. Miami is a global centre in finance, commerce, culture, arts, tourism and international trade and the setting for one of my favourite TV shows, Golden Girls. Furthermore it is the 44th-largest city in the USA and has the third-largest skyline in the country with over 300 high-rises.

These stamps tell me how much let all my postal fun slide in the last months. Used on the right are two of the ten wonderful Star Wars Droids (issued 04-05-2021), which I was actually trying to get all on postcards as well. However I abandoned my hope after I had seven of them and now this feels like it was ages ago. Nonetheless these two, Chopper and IG-11, I think are the most interesting from the set, as these are the first stamps ever that show characters that were not introduced in the Star Wars movies, but in the many TV shows. Chopper was one of the stars of the show Star Wars Rebels and more recently made an appearance in Bad Batch, while IG-11 originates from the Disney+ original series The Mandalorian. 

Thank You very much Tracey!

USA: Vader's Little Princess

On 26th May I got two postcards from the USA.

One of them shows an illustration of Vader's Little Princess by Jeffrey Brown. Jeffrey Brown is an American cartoonist. His first book, Clumsy, was published in 2002, but he might actually be most famous for his Star Wars comics. The first one was Darth Vader and Son in 2013, which shows Darth Vader as hapless father to the young Luke Skywalker. It was followed by Vader's Little Princess in 2013. That book uses the same premise, but with Leia instead Luke. Good Night, Darth Vader and Darth Vader and Friends followed in 2014 and 2015.

Two more of the great Star Wars Droids stamps (issued 04-05-2021) were used on the card. Here you can see the most famous and popular droids of the franchise, R2-D2 and C-3PO, who appeared in many movies, TV series, books and comics since their first appearance in the original Star Wars movie in 1977. 

Thank You very much wanderingpt17!

Star Wars Droids - Sheet and Covers

My favourite stamp issue of this year so far comes from the USA. On 4th May an impressive sheet of Star Wars Droids stamps was issued, which includes twenty stamps of ten different droids. These Droids range from the original trilogy and the sequel trilogy to the anthology movies and the TV shows. As soon as it was possible I ordered this sheet online and got it delivered directly to me on 22nd May. I do not want to get into the details of these stamps, as I try to get all of them on postcards as well, but look at this beauty!

Some of the stamps I already got on cards (see last post and stay tuned!), but all of them I already got on covers. These ten covers were all sent with Star Wars postmarks from different cities. It is interesting to see how different these covers are handled.

The first two covers arrived on 17th May. BB-8 here was cancelled with the special postmark and the additional stamp on the left was cancelled with a normal red postmark. A machine cancellation was applied as well. 

The card in the cover shows the Four Corners Monument, where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah meet. It is the only place in the USA where four states meet each other.

D-0 on the second cover only is faintly touched by the special postmark from Anthony and the stamp on the left remained uncancelled.

I really love the card in this cover. It shows a photo of a family vacation at the World's most famous UFO landing place.

This cover was sent in a bigger cover and the cover that was used to mail the cover to Anthony was included in the big cover as well. Interestingly a Global Forever stamp was added to the actually prepaid big cover, which got also cancelled with the Star Wars postmark.

The next four covers arrived one day later on 18th May. On this one again the additional stamp remained uncancelled, but R2-D2 got a proper cancellation.

New Mexico - Land of Enchantment? This view looks like this is true.

The card was taken out of the cover, a stamp of D-0 was affixed and got cancelled with the special postmark. This is a very cool service. I have never seen it before.

The next cover comes from Alamogordo. Here the additional stamp got cancelled and C-3PO is also nicely cancelled.

The card inside shows a view of the most famous road in the USA and maybe even the World, Route 66.

Roswell cancelled Chopper well, but President Harding is untouched. In Roswell they surely know how to deal with an alien roboter!

This card shows another view of Route 66. This car looks like it was already there, when the road was established in 1926.

The 2-1B Droid from Animas is also well cancelled. The additional stamp is also cancelled and a machine postmark can be seen as well, but it is upside down.

More Route 66 here, it gets more modern again.

On 19th May L3-37 arrived with special postmark and machine cancellation. Benjamin Franklin is uncancelled.

Albuquerque is shown on this card. It is the largest city in New Mexico and was also located on the historic Route 66.

The Gonk Droid also arrived on 19th May. This is a bit of an overkill: special postmark, two machine cancellations and the stroke of a pen. The Droid thus got three cancellations, the American Kestrel only the pen.

The card in this cover shows Oatman, the town of the free roaming Burros.

After the Pentecost weekend IG-11 arrived on 25th May. Here the additional stamp got cancelled, Albuquerque however uses blue colour. Also look at the other nice stamps. On all ten covers is a complete set about Comic Strip Classics (issued 01-10-1995). Just like the Droids this is another nice addition for my collection of Childhood Heroes on Stamps, although I only know Popeye.

Route 66 might be the most famous road in the World, but this is probably the most used tourism phrase in the World. Although it is more suitable for a t-shirt. A postcard is never lousy!

The first nine arrived quickly, but number ten was in no hurry. K-2SO just made it to Germany on Monday, 14th June, nearly a month after the first cover. Probably Taylor, Arizona got the most postmark requests. The postmark is already a bit faint and Andrew Jackson is uncancelled as well. 

The last card brings us back to Route 66 once again.

Thank You very much for all these great covers Sam-Quito!

USA: Devils Tower

On 22nd May I got a postcard from the USA.

The card shows an impressive night view of the Devils Tower in Wyoming. Devils Tower is a butte, an isolated hill with steep sides and a small, relatively flat top. The place appears in the legends of multiple Native Americans tribes and became the first US National Monument in 1906. Featured in the 1977 movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the fame of the Devils Tower rose and nowadays it is popular with climbers.

I love the stamps used here and they perfectly match the brilliant night sky on the card and its Science Fiction connection. On the left is a stamp about Skylab (issued 14-05-1974), the first US space station, and on the right are two of the ten new Star Wars Droids stamps (issued 04-05-2021). This is so far my favourite stamp set of 2021. Used here are the stamps about D-0 and BB-8, both introduced in the sequel trilogy. BB-8 first appeared in The Force Awakens as an BB astromech droid owned by Poe Dameron. Later working together with Rey, he became a hero of the Resistance and one of the most popular characters of the sequel trilogy. D-0 on the other hand was once owned by a Sith assassin and was just introduced in The Last Jedi, the last movie of the sequel trilogy, where he however quickly befriended the Resistance heroes and BB-8 in particular. While these two are the first of these stamps I show you here, they are not the first I received. On the same day as this card I also got my ordered mint sheet of them and a few covers with these I also got before this card. Those I will show you in my next post.

Thank You very much Patrick!

cover from the USA

On 11th December I got not only a postcard but also a cover from the USA.

One of the most historic US stamps was used on this cover. Issued on 9th September 1969 it commemorates the Moon Landing. The USA were by far not the first country to celebrate this Moon Landing with a stamp. Algeria, Poland and Romania for example were faster. The other two stamps are about Latin American cuisine (issued 20-04-2014). These two show Tamales and Flan. They were cancelled with a giant snowman postmark.

Inside was a postcard about the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, the largest balloon festival in the World. Can you see the balloons about the Brandenburg Gate and Darth Vader?

 Thank You very much Sam-Quito!

cover from France.

On 10th December I got a cover from France.

The stamp is from a booklet of twelve stamps promoting the saving of historic monuments (issued 12-09-2019).

Inside was a postcard with a Giant Panda and two small cards about Star Wars characters. This was sent as an official card.

 Thank You very much Delphine!

Four Covers from the USA, Star Wars Stamps and Many Postcards

Last but not least or actually even the most stunning incomings during my absence came from the USA. Four covers arrived, all filled with postcards and stamps, which I decided to put together in one post, as the stamps on the covers are best seen together. 

Used over three of the covers was a stamp set I was looking for for years already: the complete set of US stamps for the 30th anniversary of Star Wars (issued 25-05-2007). Shown on the stamps are heroes and villains from the original triology and the prequels like Darth Vader, Emperator Palpatine, Queen Amidala, Master Yoda, Darth Maul, Princess Leia and R2-D2. Interestingly the stamps are printed with some type of varnish due to which most of the postmarks were wiped off. On the third cover the German Post used a "cancelled afterwards" cancel, but also of that not much can be seen anymore. Apart from the souvenir sheet with the fifteen stamps a single stamp with Master Yoda came out in the same year (issued 25-10-2007). That stamp was used on the fourth cover together with a stamp about Scooby-Doo (issued 14-07-2018) and two of the ten stamps about the Art of Ellsworth Kelly (issued 31-05-2019).

Among the stamps that were in the covers there were these two souvenir sheets about Bugs Bunny (issued 22-05-1997) and the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote (issued 26-04-2000). The other stamps that were inside you can see here on my stamp blog.

In total 14 cards were in the covers. Most of them show national monuments or national parks and all of them have cancels on the backside. This is the order in which they were in the covers.

The Chiricahua National Monument is shown on the first card. The Chiricahua National Monument was established in the Chiricahua Mountains of Arizona in 1924 to protect its extensive hoodoos and balancing rocks.

Fort Bowie was used as army outpost during fights with Native Americans for thirty years between 1864 and 1894. Located in Arizona, it is protected as National Historic Site.

Zion National Park makes an appearance on the first card from the second cover. The national park in Utah was established in 1919 and is known for its unique geography and a variety of life zones that allow for unusual plant and animal diversity. Its most famous feature is the Zion Canyon.

The Organ Mountains are a rugged mountain range in southern New Mexico. In 2014 the Organ Mountains–Desert Peaks National Monument was established, which protects both wilderness and many archaeological and cultural sites of interest. Located nearby is the Prehistoric Trackways National Monument. Of both national monuments there are cancels on the backside of the card.

Tuzigoot National Monument preserves a pueblo ruin on the summit of a limestone and sandstone ridge in Arizona. The pueblo was built by the Sinagua people between 1125 and 1400, was excavated from 1933 to 1935 and was designated a national monument by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939.

Fort Union was founded in 1851 just three years after New Mexico was annexed by the USA at the conclusion of the Mexican-American War. Since 1954 it is a national monument.

The first card from the third cover shows the Red Canyon. The Red Canyon is located in the Dixie National Forest in Utah and is described as gateway to the Bryce Canyon National Park 15km to the north-west. I especially like the cancel about Smokey the Bear.

The Aztec Ruins National Monument was created in 1923. The ruins were built by the Pueblo Indians nearly a thousand years ago. Their name however is the result of a misattribution. They were not built by the Aztecs. As part of the Chaco Culture is the Aztec Ruins National Monument since 1987 on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah or more precisely Thor's Hammer in the park is shown on the next card. The national park was established in 1928 and despite its name it is no canyon, but a collection of giant natural amphitheaters.

The Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array is a centimeter-wavelength radio astronomy observatory built in New Mexico in the 1970s. Astronomers using the site have made key observations of black holes and protoplanetary disks around young stars, discovered magnetic filaments and traced complex gas motions at the Milky Way's center, probed the Universe's cosmological parameters and provided new knowledge about the physical mechanisms that produce radio emission. Also it has appeared repeatedly in American popular culture and especially Science Fiction movies since its construction.

Montezuma Castle National Monument is shown on the first card of the last cover. Also this name is the result of a misattribution. Originally the dwellings were built and used by the Sinagua people, a pre-Columbian culture, between approximately 1100 and 1425, but were abandoned more than 40 years before the famous Aztec emperor Montezuma was born. Also it is not a castle in the traditional sense, but more like a prehistoric high rise apartment complex.

The Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument in New Mexico is a complex of three Spanish missions, the Gran Quivira Ruins, the Abó Ruins and the Quarai Ruins. The first and the last are shown on these two cards. Once home to thriving Native American trade communities, in the early 17th century Spanish Franciscans found the area ripe for their missionary efforts. Gran Quivira is a national monument since 1909. The other two were originally New Mexico State Monuments, but in 1981 they were absorbed by the national monument, which got its current name in 1988.

The Death Valley National Park shown on the last card is not only one of the most famous national parks in the USA but also the largest in the contiguous USA. Famous for being one of the hottest places in the World, it is also home to the second-lowest point in the Western Hemisphere, Badwater Basin. In 2013 it was also designated as a dark sky park.

Thank You very much Sam-Quito for all these wonderful cards and stamps!