Asakiyume mita

You've heard of USPS Forever stamps, but how about Wherever stamps?



I got a letter from my friend C, who was in Barcelona recently.

"Oooh, a letter from C from overseas!" I thought. Then I looked at the stamp and saw it was a US international stamp. I know these well, as we have family in the UK and Japan, so I buy them often.

"Hmmm, so, she must have sent this letter when she got home," I thought. "But in that case, why did she use an international stamp? ... And why is the cancellation in Spanish?" But the letter was kind of heavy, so I decided she must have used the international stamp to cover the extra cost. As for the cancellation, well, Spanish is a widely used language in this country, so maybe her post office in Pittsburgh just happened to have a Spanish cancellation stamp.

I sent her a text saying how the stamp had confused me, but I'd figured things out.

She replied:

I sent it from Spain! I just happened to have some leftover international stamps and I didn’t even think that they wouldn’t work in the Spanish mail system, LOL! I didn’t even think about that until now!

Mind = Blown

I looked at the cancellation again, and sure enough, you can just make out "Barcelona" over the stamp. (If you click through to Flickr, you can see it larger.)

So the Spanish postal clerk either didn't notice, or saw it and thought, "Eh, it's a stamp--good enough."

And now I'm thinking how great it would be if we had international postal reciprocity like that! (Although I really enjoy foreign stamps, so I wouldn't want *everyone* to use their own postage overseas.)

Note: I was so mindblown by the US stamp passing in Spain that I wondered if I've been wrong all this time and you can use your own nation's stamps to mail things home from another nation, and the answer is no. No, you can't.

Here is a Spanish international-mail stamp:

Did you know the United Nations issues its own stamps? It does. Initially they were only in US currency and sold only at UN headquarters in New York. The first was sold on United Nations day (24 October) in 1951. Now they're also issued in euros and Swiss currency in the UN's Vienna and Geneva offices.

Human rights, the environment, endangered species and peace are all subjects of universal concern to the peoples of the world. They are also subjects which the United Nations Postal Administration (UNPA) has promoted on its stamps.

Because United Nations stamps reflect the work of the world Organization, the stamps extend beyond the boundaries of philately to draw attention to significant world problems and to serve as a reminder of the UN’s commitment to its goals.

The United Nations is the only organization in the world which is neither a country nor a territory that is permitted to issue postage stamps. It is also the only postal authority to issue stamps in three different currencies, namely U.S. dollars, Swiss francs and Euro.

(From "United Nations Stamp History,")

And I have one! Here it is; I've scanned it.
(It's not on a subject of universal concern, but world treasures are good subjects for stamps, too.)


I also have two stories about messages in bottles. One is about a fisherman from Iceland: as a boy, collecting eggs, he put a message in a bottle into the bay. Nineteen years later, as a man collecting eiderdown (from eggs to eiderdown), he found the same bottle, some seven miles from its original location. (Story here.)

The other is about a really cool-seeming guy, Chad Pregracke,, founder of Living Lands and Waters, who has a mission to clean up the great rivers of the United States. He's got a collection of about 70 bottles, which he says have contained all sorts of things--messages to departed loved ones, musical scores, dollar bills, even suicide notes. (Story here.)

One of Chad's bottles, containing a photo of Bill Clinton. Photo by Erica Peterson