Sunday Stamps: 'S' is for strips / stripverhaal and schaak

This weekend Sunday Stamps' theme is the letter 'S'.
In general I don't really collect postage stamps. 'What?' - I hear you say :-)
I mean, I'm not really looking for stamps or buying them to add them to my collection: as a 'passive' collector I just keep the stamps I receive, and of the Dutch stamps I buy for my outgoing mail I keep some mint ones if they show an interesting or pretty picture.
However, there are a few themes which I'm collecting in a more active way. The funny thing is that two of these themes start with an 'S' in Dutch, while both start with a 'C' in English.

A strip (plural: strips) in Dutch means comic(s) in English. Stripboek = comic book, stripverhaal = comic story.
Above you can see a stamp sheet which I was very happy to add to my strip stamps collection. The Asterix comics I already read in my childhood, and I still like to read them (and I think I've read all albums).
Although one might wonder if the stories maybe are against my non-violence principles. Strange enough I just recently realized how much assault and beating happens in the Asterix stories: not before reading a scientific article about traumatic brain injuries!..



Schaken is the other word I'd like to share today. The word 'schaken' looks plural and means 'playing chess'. The literal translation of 'schaakspel' (chess-play) refers to the board and chess pieces themselves. As a verb, 'schaken' means 'to play chess'.
In my collection there are several stamps on this theme, but due to lack of time I couldn't scan them to show you today. This first day cover from the Faroe Islands I've bought and scanned some time ago. The postmark shows my favourite chess piece: the paard. The Dutch name 'paard' literally means horse, we don't use the English translation of 'knight' which in fact means 'ridder'.

If you're into chess, I guess you immediately must have noted something peculiar in this chess stamp!


See more stamps on the letter 'S' at and via today's Sunday Stamps!

Sunday Stamps: Cartoon characters

This Sunday Stamps theme is one of my very most favourite themes: cartoon characters.
Which I freely translated into 'cartoon and comics characters'. No need to say that I am delighted with VioletSky's choice!

Before this Sunday I thought I didn't really 'collect' postage stamps - just 'keep' them when nice stamps accidentally come into my home. However, now I realize this theme I really am collecting. That is: buy, in order to keep them in a special cartoon / comics stamp album.

Although I won't search the whole world to find them, like 'real collectors' do. Not all comic/cartoon stamps are on my wish list. For instance classic Disney stamps I won't collect. They cause a happy smile on my face, but as these are abundantly issued worldwide I prefer other people to collect them. The cartoon stamps I consciously will take home are in fact the following ones:
- Asterix and Obelix
- Smurfs
- Dutch comic/cartoon character stamps (see for instance Eva's blog post) and 'foreign' characters issued by Dutch post (see for instance the stamp sheet on top).

To my opinion many comics and animation movies aren't just meant for children.
Many animation movies contain messages for grown-ups, too. For instance 'Up' (about getting old, family and friendship) and 'Ratatouille' (also about friendship and family, and about loyalty, and Paris), are all-time favourites for that.
Stamps on these great Disney/Pixar movies were sent to me by a kind lady from the USA.



Oh, and Wall-e (the stamp on the right, the story also is about friendship) learns us about waste and shows the dangers of a sedential life!


Dutch Post recently issued regular stamps and an extra stamp set on the Dutch comic character Tom Poes and his fellow Ollie B. Bommel, for their 75th anniversary.
The stories go without text balloons but are shown as illustrations, accompanied by text printed under the comic drawings.
Dutch Post has issued Tom Poes stamps before, in 1996 this mini stamp sheet:




Finally Asterix!
As you already might have seen on the main Sunday Stamps blog, Germany has issued nice stamps on Asterix and Obelic recently.
Unfortunately I couldn't order the complete sheet via German Post, but suddenly I was lucky to be able to buy the complete stamp sheet via 'marktplaats' (Dutch ebay). Here it is:



Do you notice the mailman in the back?

Asterix (also about friendship and loyalty) learns us a little about history. Although there are some negative issues in it too, which I neglected as a child, but for which my eyes are opened now. Besides the sad destination of many swines, there are a lot of other injured, as this medical article on traumatic brain injuries proofs. Fortunately these wounded get well immediately, as is usance in comic books like these.

The Asterix albums are a 'must' for language lovers, too. Besides Asterix stamps I'm collecting also one specific album in various languages: Asterix in Corsica. The fun thing about that is that there's a meeting in which characters from previous albums gather. So I learned that the small hispanic boy, Pepe Paella y Peseta in Dutch, is named Pepe Costa y Bravo in German. And the main Corsican character, Ocatarinetabellatchitchix (in French), in the Dutch album has been named after a Dutch song: Ozewiezewozewiezewallakristallix!
Now we can get information like this via the internet, but in the eighties, when I got my first Asterix in Corsica album in an other language (Spanish, at that time) it was so special!

Find more great cartoon stamps on/via the Sunday Stamps blog post of 19th of June.