Missed a few great releases during my time away from the blog, but wanted to give this one a mention. Back in March, New Zealand released an issue on native glowworms. And fittingly… these stamps GLOW IN THE DARK!
Oh wait. You can’t see them glowing, can you? That’s always been the obstacle faced when advertising stamps with this gimmick.
Fear not! Thanks to the marvels of modern technology, New Zealand Post was able to advertise this amazing feature with a .gif file!
Oooooooooooh! Glowwwwy!
(For non-techies: a .gif image file allows for animation, like what’s happening there. Debate continues among pedants over whether it’s pronounced “jif” or “gif”, except in New Zealand, where they debate whether it’s “juf” or “guf”.)
Ever since their invention, .gifs have been looking for a purpose. I think we can agree that that purpose is clearly to be found in the promotion of glow-in-the-dark stamps. It might not be the first time it’s happened, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it. Nice to see postal administrations learning to use the powers of the internet shortly before it wipes them off the face of the earth.
On looking into this, I found kcsquare’s Philaquely Moi blog. It has a neat (non-.gif) rundown of stamps that glow in the dark or have other little secrets. But more interestingly, it has another page that uses .gifs to depict stamps with motion graphics in them. I don’t know whether they were made by the issuing postal authorities, or from collectors being clever. Perhaps he can answer that when he gets curious about where all the hits are coming from and clicks through to this page. Hi kcsquare! Not trying to creep you out or anything, but we’ve been waiting for you.
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© Philatelic product images remain the copyright of issuing postal administrations and successor authorities
Punk Philatelist 
Reblogged this on HikingAustralia and commented:
Nuova Zelanda: i francobolli che luccicano al buio. Wow!
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I like these funny stamps!
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Thank you for your kind comments on my blog.. Philaquelymoi .. regarding gifs on my blog .. some were issued by the postal authorities.. rest I made from the pictures made available to me from the postal authorities.. most used gif by Philatelic bloggers is the one I made on the Stamp flip book page where every animated stamp is uploaded in a gif format to understand the progress of the animation..
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