Newfoundland Airship Company Zeppelin Fantasy Labels

I noticed these in passing and they struck a chord with me.

(Pictures courtesy of ebay seller nfldairship at http://myworld.ebay.com/nfldairship )(I don't have any of these yet.)

NAC-030


NAC-001


NAC-005

Heeeey, hold on a second . . .

NAC-004 . . vs . . real Newfoundland stamps:


Hmmmmm . . .

I hate to keep copying from ebay and such. Does anyone have any more of these or more information to share?

These are kind of neat. Here's another website, though it doesn't tell you much about the company. Copyright 2005, so there's a rough time line.

http://eustacia-2011.info/NEWFOUNDL...610160736123

Those are fascinating cinderellas. Although I can't find much about them on the internet either, I did come across another example on a closed ebay listing from Germany, which must certainly be part of the same series. In this case, however, the cinderella has the caption "Polar Mail"!

These are fun.

With each ebay listing there is a little write-up about what the stamp is depicting. I will copy what I can to Stamp Community.


Here is stamp #NAC-003, depicting the good airship 'Beothuk'.
(Beothuk is the tribal name for the now extinct Newfoundland aboriginal people.)


Picture and following text courtesy of ebay seller http://myworld.ebay.com/nfldairship/ .

I assume we're all aware that the same ebay seller is marketing all of these stamps. Did he create them, I wonder? They look too new to be vintage to the period of airships, so I assume they are of recent manufacture.

I had assumed as much after seeing his user name, but maybe he is just selling them and someone else made them.




And he says they are of imaginary events, but I haven't emailed him to ask who has actually made the stamps.

Supreme fantasy.

They look good because the maker is probably using photoshopped borders of real Newfoundland stamps and perhaps other stamps as well.

Quite intriguing really.

I was at the library today and I asked the librarian for any info on this topic just to see if any airships had been in Newfoundland during this time (1919 or so) and she found a picture on Google being sold on Amazon UK of a 1920 Newfoundland airship.

The picture is entitled Hunting For Seals By Airship. Notice the two groups of seals on the ice.


From an illustrated weekly magazine 'the Graphic' in 1920, the sale entitled '1920 Newfoundland Airship Frank Tippen Spurgeon Edith Wharton' by Amazon UK seller old-print. (also of old-print.com)

The Newfoundland government paid for a trial run of using airships to hunt down the seal pack and direct the main seal hunting fleet towards it by wireless, the four airships being led by engineer Frank Tippen.

I am not sure why the other words are in the title.

So, there were airships in Newfoundland at the time which lends an air of almost-could-have-been to the stamps.

Fantasy stamps pure and simple.
These kind of items are very popular today with both makers/sellers and collectors.
If one can find a market, and many do, then the encouragment is there to make more.
Some years ago I was smitten by the Gilligan's Island Fantasy stamps, both simple and superb in design. I could only find one outlet selling them and as I had many other projects at the time I decided against it.
It was a mistake. Now they are very hard to find !

A very big branch of Cinderellas and rapidly growing.

Londonbus1

Description from "Field Guide to the Cinderella Stamps of Canada" (reproduced with permission):
"The fictional Newfoundland Airship Company was started in 2004 by an aerophilately enthusiast from Cambridge, Massachusetts who, having deep family ties to Newfoundland, designed a set of colourful stamps depicting Newfoundland and Labrador whaling themes, or imaginary aviation events featuring zeppelins, airships, dirigibles and blimps. The design frames are inspired from actual Newfoundland postage, airmail, or revenue stamps, or the 1908 Labrador USA stamps. The stamps were first offered to collectors in 2006. At least 50 different stamps have been produced, and more are added annually. The stamps are printed on dry gummed paper and clearly marked as "cinderella" or "faux" on the back. There is a set of 4 stamps with whaling themes (NW-01 to -04, issued in 2007), a more extensive set of stamps with aviation themes, as well as various essays and postal covers."