Sunday Stamps: toys or games

Today's Sunday Stamps theme is 'Toys or games'.

And today - 6th of December - also happens to be the day after 'Pakjesavond' ('gifts eve', Saint Nicholas' Eve), in the Netherlands the main evening in the Sinterklaas celebration. In this evening people give each other presents, accompanied by a personal poem and sometimes packed in a funny, mostly personalized way.
To be short: today in the Netherlands many children are playing with their new toys and/or games. An excellent day for this choice of theme!

I'll start with an older Europe (CEPT) stamp from Belgium.
Lucky me, I got it from a kind colleague, who had cut-out some stamps years before to give one day to someone interested, and apparently I was one of a few interested.



The stamps, issued in 1989, show marbles ('knikker' in Dutch :-) ) and remind me of playing with marbles in my childhood time. Nowadays marbles still are sold in toy stores, but I hardly (or: never) see children play with them... We have marbles at home but also my kids ignore them...

Talking about Europe, this year (2015) the Europa stamps' theme was 'old toys', so many countries have issued stamps on this theme!
See this website for all countries' contributions.

I received the Spanish stamp, a wooden train pictured, which in real smells a bit after wood:



The Dutch stamp was part of this stamp sheet, of which the other stamp shows the board game 'Mens-erger-je-niet!' ('man, don't feel annoyed!', in English better known as Ludo):



Meanwhile Dutch PostNL also has issued a stamp sheet on toys of today. Well, the Rubik's cube has celebrated his 40th birthday last year, and the game console might have newer versions nowadays :-)



In contrary to marbles, at least our son didn't ignore the cube, fortunately. And did you know that there even are international Rubik's cube (and other cubes) competitions?

See more great toys stamps on and via the Sunday Stamps blog post of today.

In: from Spain

Ik loop erg achter met het plaatsen van ansichtkaarten op deze blog. Deze reclamekaart voor een Spaanse uitgever, ontving ik in de zomer van 2011 van Eva. Er staat: 'Alle universums passen in je (broek)zak'.
Het duurde ruim twee jaar voordat ik 'm aan jullie toon. Bij deze!
Maar twee jaar is maar weinig, vergeleken met de 71 jaren die het geduurd heeft, voordat deze man uit Nieuw-Zeeland herenigd werd met zijn kostbare knikker, die hij als kind in de tweede wereldoorlog had verstopt.

I am very much behind in publishing postcards here. This ad card for a Spanish editor I received in summer 2011 from Eva. The text says: 'All universes fit in your pocket'.
It has waited for more than two years to be shown to you all. But two years is little, compared with the 71 years time it took for this man from New Zealand to reunite with his precious marble he had hidden as a child in WWII.



Thank you very much, Eva!