Deutsche Post has
established special philately windows in 26 major post offices throughout the
country. Each uses a datestamp with the letters 'ps' in it to distinguish it
from normal datestamps. The letters ps stand for Philatelie-shop.
I wanted to have all
26 of these postmarks so before I went to the Briefmarken-Messe in Essen in May
2017 I prepared 26 envelopes to send to the different post offices. The reason
I sent requests to all 26 Philatelie-Shops at the same time was because since I
was in Germany I could send letters for the national postal tariff of 70 cents
instead of the Dutch international tariff of 1,33 euro, a difference of 63
cents per envelope.
For the envelope I
used the new definitive 90 cent stamp from the flower series, issued on 11 May
2017 that I bought at the Philatelie-Shop in Essen on the first day of issue.
The lady behind the
counter had a rough day. Not only was it her first day in the Philately-Shop
(the colleague that normally was there was on holiday), but it was also the
first day of issue of five series of stamps. This meant she got a lot of stamp
collectors that wanted single stamps, horizontal pairs, vertical pairs, block
of four, sheets of ten. And then there
was me with a list of stamps from the last three years. The next day I saw her
again sitting in her normal place. She had survived the stampede and was still
smiling.
She cancelled my envelope and kept it to send to my home. It arrived there only two days later, the first of the 26 to make it to the Netherlands.
The
Philatelie-Shop can be found in the central post office, located opposite the
central station (Hauptbahnhof). The address for postmark requests is:
Willy-Brandt-Platz 1, 45127 Essen, Germany. Opening hours: Mo-Fr 8.30-19.00 h.,
Sat 9.30-15.30 h.
Date sent: 11 May 2017
Date postmark: 11 May
2017
Date received: 13 May
2017
Number of days: 2
Envelope in
collection: 39
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