A U S T R I A
Today I present to you the first
Austrian Volleyball stamp. About two years ago, the Austrian Post started
to sell personalized stamps to the public. You can check out more details
on their webpage (in German language)
www.post.at . Many big companies, but also a lot of private persons
have made use of this service so far. The difference of these Austrian
personalized stamps is that they are REAL stamps, not labels printed
together with another stamp as many other countries do.
Last year the Austrian Post also started selling personalized stamps
ordered by the Austrian Post itself. So we could say they are official
issues, although they are not part of the official yearly stamp issuing
programme.
On Sep 24, 2005, Austria celebrated itīs "Sports Day". A souvenir sheet
with 20 personlized stamps was issued, and one of them shows the 2003
European champions in Beach Volleyball, Clemens Doppler and Nik Berger.
You can see this stamp on this privately made FDC, which was postally
used.
For me being an Austrian a very nice item for my collection. I would like
to thank my friend, Ortwin Schieesl from Vienna, who was so kind as to
prepare and send this cover for me.
