Japanese New Year Stamps

I was just looking at the stamps on ebay (I swear, I was!) and I came across New Years stamps up for auction. The description of the tradition of the cards I found interesting, but what I really wondered about was where if talks about the lottery postage stamps that were issued. Did you actually win something or were they just advertising the lottery in general? The FU stamps are????? Not what I think...right?

http://cgi.ebay.com/JAPAN-40-DIFF-N...em5d2b708c81

Donna

Here are a few stamps with lottery numbers. The lottery prizes can be TV, cameras, travel vouchers, etc.

FU stamps are fine used stamps.

I think the claim as the "first" lottery-style stamp
may be worth research.
Lottery style stamps have been issued by New Zealand, Norway, Estonia,
Netherlands and France which may take the title.

Lottery : A tax on people who are bad at math.

REDBUS: This is the second time that FU has come up in the past few days. I posted elsewhere, but I'll repeat here, I crack up every time I think of the line from the movie version of The Odd Couple...

"We're out of Corn Flakes -- FU"
"It took me two hours to figure out FU was Felix Unger"
--spoken by Oscar Madison (Walter Matthau)

Of course, you have to be of a certain age to remember The Odd Couple

KirkS

We're getting off the subject of stamps, I know, but I remember The Odd Couple! Also, on the TV series, Felix Unger was a photographer (portaits a specialty) and his office door read: "FU Enterprises." What cracks me up is how Felix explains to the court the meaning of the word "ass" "u" "me" when he and Oscar are accused of ticket scalping.

redbus,
I think I have some of those stamps. I thought that it was some sort of plate number and Japan just put it on the stamp. Now I have to go back and add a notation to my notebook on them....lol

Donna