TV

The 12 Stamps of Christmas

| The Punk Philatelist

UPDATE! I’ve added a couple of reader’s nominations to the bottom of the list! Read on…

It’s the 12th day of Christmas. The Christmas tree withers in the corner, unwatered for days. The batteries on the toys have expired. The gurgling remnants of Christmas lunch are in a fight to the death with New Year’s resolutions. So it’s the perfect time for me to give you my 12 Stamps of Christmas! After all, I am your true love.

As mail revenues continue to plummet, for the postal administrations of Christendom, Christmas offers one last chance to hear the bells jingling on their cash registers. (Do you know how many Christmas cards I got in the mail this year? None. That’s a first. It might be that I’ve been crossed off multiple lists. But I choose to blame The Pace of Change.)

So which countries brought their festive philatelic A-game in 2018? These are my favourites of the stamps that crossed my radar. Continue reading →

Printer is gumming: UK issues Game of Thrones stamps

| The Punk Philatelist

UK 2018 Game of Thrones 1st Iron Throne stampHappy New Year, readers! Hoping your year is as bloody awesome as the pun in my headline.

2018 has kicked off with the news that on January 23, the UK’s Royal Mail is releasing no less than 15 stamps commemorating “the significant British contribution” to the production of the TV series Game of Thrones.

Here’s the Royal Mail’s justification for jumping on the GoT band-dragon:

The Game of Thrones production involves a very significant British contribution. Principal filming of the series is at Titanic Studios in Belfast, at the Linen Hill Film Studio in Banbridge and on location elsewhere in Northern Ireland, with additional filming in Scotland and European locations including Malta, Croatia, Iceland, Morocco and Spain.
Additionally, the acclaimed cast is predominantly British and Irish, and British expertise is to the fore in many areas of the production, including award-winning costume design and prosthetic special effects.

And here’s what they might as well have written:

Game of Thrones is huge and we are out to make a shipload of coin.

UK 2018 Game of Thrones 1st Daenerys Targaryen stampUK 2018 Game of Thrones 1st Cersei Lannister stampUK 2018 Game of Thrones 1st Tyrion Lannister stampUK 2018 Game of Thrones 1st Jon Snow stamp

Continue reading →

Vintage-loving hipsters can eat my shorts

VintageAirmailCase
| The Punk Philatelist

Editor’s note: many of the embedded links in this article won’t work anymore. I guess they just couldn’t handle the pressure of my rage. PP

Have you seen that scene in The Simpsons where the family discovers that Bart has a stamp collection? I can’t find the video online, so here’s the scene as found on Wikiquote.

The Simpsons stamp collection quote(If you can find a link to an embeddable video, Punk will love you forever.)

This is what it’s like hanging out with certain of my uber-cool hipster friends. In their hands, the hobby that brings me friends around the world, money on the side and virtual immunity from dementia becomes fodder for mockery.

Yet when my friends aren’t working in their made-up jobs for startups that will collapse next week, they’re all about Vintage. They shave their armpits using heritage methods Continue reading →