Hindu Deities in Stamps from Usa-postage.com

Just last night I received an email from a prominent philatelist in USA on an innovative philatelic product. It is postage stamp depicting 7 different religious deities from Hinduism. Usa-postage.com has created 7 spiritual designs targeted to the Indian community in the United States. These stamps, available on high quality paper are adhesive-backed postage are produced using advanced printing technology within a short time frame. The pictures are of Sai baba, Lord Venkateshwara, Lakshmi, Murugan, Vinayaka, Shiva – Parvathi and Sri Krishna. Each stamp has denomination of US 0.44 cents. They all are available on 20 stamp commemorative sheets.

I had seen custom designed postage stamps from the US as it is becoming more and more common but to see Hindu gods and goddess in stamps, it has been something of a different experience! Let us see how popular these stamps are going to be in the days to come.

1996 Nepalese Birds and Butterflies Stamps

On November 20, 1996, a commemorative stamp in se tenant block of four was issued by the Postal Authority of Nepal on butterflies and birds found in Nepal. This mini sheet consisted of 16 stamps. This was by and far one of the most beautiful stamps on fauna issued by the Government of Nepal. The stamps have painting of two butterflies (Papilio krishna) known as Krishna Peacock, and Northern Jungle Queen (Sticopthalma camadeva) as well as two birds Sarus Crane (Grus antigone) and Great Himalayan Barbet (Megalaima virens) with Himalayan mountains, hills and a lake in the backdrop. The design is subtle yet colorful. Any stamps that are colorful, bold in color and have detailed art work are truly beautiful to me. There are lots of beautiful stamps out there from Nepal on various topics and themes but this one can be classified as eye catching and is a top notch.

Printing of these stamps was done in Government Printing Office, Vienna, Austria. Each stamp has denomination of Nepalese five Rupees. The stamps are printed in stamp paper by litho process. The perforation for the stamp is 14 x 14 while the size of each stamp is 30 mm x 40 mm.

Picture of se tenant block is courtesy of rajan.com.