COIMBRA - CANCEL

THE COMMEMORATIVE CANCEL OF THE PHILATELIC EXPOSITION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF COIMBRA (THEME SPORT - 1998)

HOMAGE TO THE SPORT IN THE UNIVERSITY OF COIMBRA

On March 1, 1998 another special day of the University of Coimbra was celebrated. 708 years of the foundation of the oldest Portuguese University were commemorated, the one that now is situated in Coimbra and that was founded in 1290 in Lisbon by D. Dinis.

The program of the commemorations integrated this year an organised philatelic display of the Philatelic Section of A.A.C. subordinated to the theme sport that inspired the University Day of 1998. To commemorate the event the Portuguese Post emitted a commemorative cancel.

That cancel has as background the city of Coimbra, showing the "sacred hill", the University and its tower. At the bottom you can observe three sport elements: an running athlete, a net and, finally, a swimmer.

The represented athlete does not represent any specific activity. The net, in the same way, doesn't show a certain kind of sport. Therefore, we can think that the athlete represents an athletic sport, a soccer player, a rugby player, etc.; the net represents several sport modalities: tennis, volleyball, table tennis, etc.

More significant is the swimmer that appears in the cancel. Here we can perfectly identify him with the sport of swimming and, why not, it can be a homage the all kinds of watersports ?

According to our understanding, this cancel with its good graphic concept, intends to be a homage to various sport activities of the Academic Association of Coimbra, and of the several sections integrated into that important institution: handball, athletics, badminton, baseball, basketball, culturismo [?], nautical sports, fencing, soccer, gymnastics, weightlifting, judo, karate, swimming, skating, fishing, radiomodelismo [?], rugby, tennis, table tennis, volleyball y chess.

This commemorative cancel, for the reasons that we explained, can be used in general sport thematic, although some special kinds of sport can be identified easier than others, namely swimming and athletics. It is also a piece of a lot of interest for other (secondary) themes as, for instance, Portuguese cities, the city of Coimbra, the University of Coimbra, etc.

Commemorative cancel described in this article	Cancel on cover from the University of Coimbra

Regarding this cancel I would like to invite all readers of this article to send me their opinion if we should include this cancel in the correspondent catalogue as a proper Volleyball cancel or not. Please click here to send your comments.
I received one opinion from my friend Rex Hagget (England), a dedicated philatelist and collector of the sports topic of Badminton. Here is his letter:

Dear Gunter,
Reference your appeal for information about the Portuguese postmark. I have met this type before. The net in this case is the artist's representation of all games played using a net. This means that if Volleyball is played at the University then it represents Volleyball. Equally well it could also be Badminton, Tennis, Table Tennis etc, if those games are also played at that Institution. In my view, if Volleyball is played there then I would include it.
I have an English slogan postmark included in both my list of Table Tennis and Badminton Postmark catalogues. This is because I wrote to the Postmaster and asked what was the type of racket represented in the postmark. Back came the official reply that it was a general representation for all racket sports.
Hope this has been of some use.
Sincerely,
Rex.