A Nova Scotia collector found and mailed several of this year’s holiday stamps at a rural post office three days before their official issue date. Canada Post released a religious “Christmas Star” stamp plus a secular “Holiday Birds” set with domestic-, U.S.- and international rate stamps as part of its annual holiday issue on Nov. 1 (“Holiday issues continue 58-year philatelic tradition,” CSN Vol. 47 #16, Nov. 22, 2022). But one collector tracked down each of the four issues three days earlier, on Oct. 29, while making a stop on a nearly 500-kilometre drive to a stamp show from his home in Sydney, N.S. “On my early morning trip from Sydney to the South Shore Stamp Club’s Stampex 22, being held in Bridgewater, N.S., I needed to obtain the most recent issue of stamps in order to make up a few souvenir covers for my collection from the event using their pictorial cancel,” said collector Michael Ratushny. “So I pulled off the highway and went into one of the many quaint villages along the south shore and checked out the post office.” Continue reading →
Collector Michael Ratushny found several of this year’s holiday stamps available at a rural Nova Scotia post office in late October, days before their official release.
