Common Themes

Yet another find by Brian, the Fortean Times features here a collection of UFO/alien-themed stamps. Wild. Enjoy!

More of my personal collection, these stamps come from Tanzania.

I think my favorite thing about this set is the amazing colors in the artwork. They feature a number of planetary probes, observatories and telescopes, with colorful nebula and star backgrounds — fanciful, but beautiful nonetheless.

More vintage CCCP space-themed matchboxes — Flickr has the whole scan set.

Posting some of my personal collection here — these charming stamps are from Paraguay, commemorating the successful flight of Space Shuttle Columbia in 1981. My favorite thing about these is that, like other Latin stamps I’ve seen, these feature a presidential portrait: Ronald Reagan, presidente de los Estados Unidos.

I’ve carried a minor fascination with stamps since childhood, and I eagerly saved stamps we received, especially the space-related ones. Years later, I kept stamps on occasion, but I didn’t dive into the hobby until about five years ago. Still it is a sporadic thing for me, tied specifically to having completely-unfettered spending money for eBay, time to search, etc.

While I do love our United States stamps about the United States space program, what amuses me far more are stamps from countries obscure and mysterious, island nations I’ve never heard of, showing off our space achievements on their stamps. Will Mongolia, Togo, Nigeria and Paraguay launch shuttles any time soon? Probably not. Did the Space Shuttle land in the Solomon Islands? Not that I’m aware of. Why are they on stamps? NO IDEA.

In coming weeks I’ll showcase space stamps, both the amusing and the beautiful, from my personal collection and any place online having decent scans. “Decent” seems to be the key operating term — why on earth would you make large scans of stamps, only to then save them all as JPG-low quality? Why WHY?? More posts soon!