Padova, Italy

 Two stamps from 2017 commemorating the 90th anniversary of Mickey Mouse.

Perseverance on Mars

Perseverance landed on Mars on 18 February 2021. The postmark even has a little image of the robotic helicopter Ingenuity in the upper right corner which completed its second successful flight yesterday.

Campbelltown, Australia

From left to right: Rymill's de Havilland DH.83 Fox Moth from the AAT 1973 Antarctic Wildlife and Aircraft definitive series, the 40c Christmas Island Christmas stamp from 1994 and the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III from the 2011 Air Force Aviation series.

USA 59th Presidential Inauguration

 

USA Love FDC

 The USPS has been issuing "Love" stamps since 1973.

Signey Island, British Antarcitc Territory

 

Santo Amaro, Brazil

 

Hamburg to The Falkland Islands

This German postmark commemorates Lufthansa flight LH2574 from Hamburg to the Falkland Islands on 1 Feb 2021. It was a record breaking flight for Lufthansa: over 15.5 hours and 7339 nautical miles. On-board were 92 passengers destined for Neumayer Station via MV Polarstern which was docked in Stanley. 

Canada's free prepaid postcards

This is the postage-paid postcard that came in my mail last week. Canada Post distributed 13.5 million postcards to Canadian households as part of a campaign to get us to write letters to one another. I'm not sure if the campaign actually has a name. There are six different designs out there. Free to mail anywhere in Canada.

I was expecting something more like a postcard. Instead this was just a folded piece of heavy paper with one side being the detachable postcard. I wonder how many of these were recycled with the rest of the junk mail.

Japanese self-adhesive stamps

I was soaking some Japanese kiloware the other day and I was really impressed with how easily they all came off the paper. Particularly the self-adhesive stamps. I've removed self-adhesive stamps from Japan from paper before but never enough of them to really appreciate how well designed they are.

The adhesive layer is separate from the face layer of the stamp and the two are bonded together with  a water-soluble adhesive. The only reason I can think of for designing the stamps this way is so collectors can easily remove them from their sticky backing. It took no more effort to remove these stamps from paper as it did to remove the non self-adhesive stamps. They came off beautifully every time. 

USA Winter Scenes

FDC postmarked in Winter Park Florida: a small city just north of Orlando. The Winter Scenes Blue jay stamp is on the left. The middle stamp with bio-luminescent mushrooms is from 2018. They don't glow in the dark or glow under UV. Not magic mushrooms. Just shinny. And the stamp on the right is from a 1975 set that commemorates 200 years of postal services in the United States.

Canadian Crab Apple Blossoms FDC