Canada 2012 Year Of The (Water) Dragon With New Items

Pictures with a shadow included are courtesy of Canada Post's web site at: http://www.postescanada.ca/shop/col...ecution=e1s1

Along with the regular Permanent sheet of 25 stamps (water activated) and the regular International souvenir sheet
$1.80 water activated

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there are Note / Greeting Cards with stamps included:

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These are not available at my Post Office so maybe only online or at select Post Office? There are also the regularly available Postcards (not shown here (yet)).

a Transitional souvenir sheet with a (Dragon stamp $1.80) and also with last year's Rabbit stamp (Dragon Lunch !) (at last years International rate of $1.75). (Only 200,000 of these printed as apposed to 500,000 of the regular souvenir sheet.)


Puzzler Collection

Both souvenir sheets are sold out already at my regular Post Office. They have them on reorder but we will see if they get any. I haven't tried any other Post Offices yet. Edit: a friend snagged me one from his secret dragon hoard!

and the last New item is a self adhesive booklet of the International rate stamps. This booklet folds into three (if I said that correctly) so as (I thought) to fit into your wallet or purse in a nifty cool keen (my words) way.

This booklet is also seemingly designed to allow for the easy extraction of a single stamp. We will see if any Post Offices sell one or two at a time as it looks like the booklet comes apart that way, with notches already cut out to facilitate pair removal at least.


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Since I haven't yet seen a real life anything from this series I have a question.

Is the Rabbit stamp $1.75 or did they change it on the stamps to $1.80? Oops, looked on ebay and they have them up already. The stamp is last years rate of $1.75. How are you supposed to use that sucker on anything by itself. Tsk.

Are the two Rabbit stamps, this years, and last years perfed differently? If not you will not be able to tell them apart.

What is the design in the background on the booklet? A dragon coiling around the stamps?

In the greeting cards set what stamps are actually there and are they die cut or just cut our of the booklet (for International stamps that is.) (If any are in there.) Are these stamps a new version to collect?

This souvenir sheet with the rabbit is on ebay now already bid above another Buy It Now similar sheet:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Canada-MNH-...em337077cda1
with 4 days to go. - - - edit: sold for $7.00 .

edit: Oops, it has Free shipping Worldwide.

For all you dragon lovers out there here is a cute and timely and somewhat similar item being given away by ebay seller stampskwisko in BC, Canada, http://myworld.ebay.com/stampskwisko/
A Wal-mart gift card, advertised as a free gift.

Another interesting thing selling now sold on ebay (for $1.50) is a First Day Cancel (with a regular Permanent stamp (value 0.61c)) on paper
picture courtesy of ebay seller northamericanstamp http://myworld.ebay.com/northamericanstamp/



That's 2012, January 10, by the way.

Wonderful to see a real life first day cancel and stamp (rare as a dragon's egg) sell on ebay.

Here is a upper right corner block of the regular rate (61c Permanent) stamp.


and the back, with it's exposure darkened x3 to show the embossed (pushed through) aspect of the dragon.


On the two souvenir sheets and on the regular <P> stamp the dragons and rabbit and some lettering and surrounds are embossed (pushed out to the front) and coated in a glittering ink to resemble gold.

This makes for some flashy stamps! But it's very hard to take a picture and show this without the reflection glaring back at you in the picture.

So on this dragon, the black still remains black but the little gold sparkles from it's scales are the reflective bits that shine out when viewed in three dimensions.

Now for the new-style booklet.
International rate stamps at $1.80 each times six, self adhesive, so that makes two types of this stamp, the other from the souvenir sheets being water activated.

Here is a pic of my old well worn library card, which is the same size as a credit card, next to the front of a folded up booklet.


Same size, eh? Nice! Fits into the old wallet. Harkens back to years of yore when you could stuff your booklet of stamps into your handy dandy wallet. I like it. Presents well. Good idea Canada Post!

Has anyone compared the rabbit stamp of this year to the one issued last year?

Back to the booklet . . .
Here is the booklet folded open once, so on the right hand side are two panes of two stamps each, still hidden, yet to be unfolded, under the triple language note explaining about what the dragon signifies.

Here is the booklet opened fully, showing the stamps and in the background the cool geometric design.

Here is the back of the booklet when opened fully:

In this scan you can see that the booklet can be separated into three parts by tearing it apart along the serrated, dashed perforations in the booklet joints. Printer is Lowe-Martin on type 'C' (Tullis Russell) paper.



Look at that geometric design!

The lathework (I called it) or, more properly, geometric design in the background on the inside of the booklet and on the back of the booklet can be viewed, as in the second scan, to be the wings of a dragon and perhaps the wing sweep.

One thought I had was that it was too bad the geometric design did not extend onto the stamps of the booklet, thus making varieties of the stamp to collect, if one wished to do so.

CA-Post's dragons are the most attractive of all the 'Year of the Dragon' issues I've seen (in my opinion, of course).

Same was true of last year's tigers. Canada's was beautiful, US, not so much

Kirk

Re: $1.75 Rabbit

I have not been able to find a difference between this year's $1.75 Rabbit single stamp found in the dual souvenir sheet vs. last year's stamp ... I wish there was one (and hope to be corrected on this).