Swiss Surprise!

My friend Sarah surprised me by sending a lot of goodies. She sent me a lot of  United Nations Stamps, 2 Swiss Tea sachets,  beautiful postcards inside a wonderful cover franked with animal stamps. Thank you very much Sarah!!! It made my day 😊😊 .

Below are "Few" among the various gifts I received from her 😊:

Thanks once again Sarah!!

Odd World - Switzerland (Helvetia)

My Swiss collection of Odd/Unique stamps

Dominos MS 2021
Stamps with holes

Material

Wood stamp

Record stamp

Embroidery stamp

Embossed and Odd shaped

Ammonites are spirally coiled fossils found on the fossil rich Swiss Jura Mountains.

Ammonites had an outer shell like a snail, but the inner part of the shell had chambers of the kind we can still see today in the living pearly nautilus.

Odd Shaped stamps

2016 Flower and Butterfly laser cut

Round Shaped Stamps MS

Gold foil - Round Shaped

Silver foil

(It is a silver colour stamp, the scanner couldn't able to capture the real beauty of the stamp)

Hot foil stamps - Silver

Hologram

Pseudo Perforation MS

Stamps are all of the regular shapes, but MS has some Pseudo perforations in the shape of a pan, potato, garlic, and cheese.  They are just perforations, nothing to do with stamps.

15th Novermber Gastronomy

 

Folk paper

2023 Art and Architecture
Cement stamp (Material)

Crystallography : Swiss stamp

UNESCO has declared this year as a "International Year of Crystallography". UNESCO names every year according to certain theme. So focus will be on that particular theme for that year.  Usually scientific and environment related themes are selected. Crystallography plays key role in medicine, atomic structure etc.

To commemorate 2014, Swiss Post had issued two stamps on Crystallography on 6th March, 2014. To make it more special, these stamps are printed in Hot foil printing process. In Hot foil printing heat is used to transfer metallic foil to a solid surface.  Here silver foil is used to make the crystal design and the names of the crystals.

The 85 centime stamp has the picture of Epidote, a green colored mineral which is abundant in Switzerland and the 1 franc stamp has the picture of Amethyst, a quartz variety found almost everywhere.

Swiss National Park

Swiss National Park (SNP), one of Europe's oldest National Parks, is situated in Canton, East side of Switzerland.  It was established on 1st of August 1914.  It is part of UNESCO's biosphere reserve.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has been categorized SNP as a Strict Nature Reserve, which means the visitors has to strictly follow the rules and regulations of the Park to protect its nature.  This park draws the attention of more than one and a half lakh visitors a year.

This year is the centenary year for SNP and to commemorate this, Swiss Post has issued stamps on 6th March-2014 depicting a panoramic view of SNP.

Swiss Record Stamp

When I heard about Swiss Record stamp I was wondering what that would look like.  I haven't seen any real Records.

When I got that stamp I was looking for more information about Record.  My father told me that before cassettes they used to listen music in Long-Play Record players. Even I have rarely seen cassettes and cassette players. All I know is CD's and CD players,mp3 players.

On 4th September 2014 Swiss Post issued a Record Stamp, a stamp with a special coating on which Swiss National Anthem has been imprinted on it.  There is a hole in the center of the round stamp so that it can be placed on the record player to play brass version of the Swiss national Anthem.

Now I have the record stamp, I have to look for the Player to test it.

You can see the scanned image of the record below:

Gold Stamp: From Swiss Post

Post Ch, the Switzerland Postal Department has issued an Gold Vreneli miniature sheet with circular stamp on 5th September 2013. The value of the sheet is CHF 6 and it comes with authentication certificate.  Because of the complication in making the Gold embossed Stamp they have minted in small numbers targeting philately collectors.

Vreneli is the informal name for a range of legal tender gold coins produced in Switzerland.  These coins had face values of 10, 20 and 100 Swiss francs.