Vatican City Issues

Hi to all

When a Pope dies I was under the impression that all stamps from his Pontificate were destroyed.
Yet on this card from the Vatican City, there is a stamp commemorating the 50 years of Paul VI as a Priest. The card is CTO and is
dated 11-11-97. Can any-one tell me why this stamp would have still been around. I found the card in a book that I purchased today for $1.00 so I am happy with the "bookmark"
Horamakhet

Hi, Horamakhet,

That is one very attractive cover.

In answer to your question, when a Pope dies, or in the case of Benedict XVI when he resigned, his ring is cut to symbolically indicate the end of his pontificate...but that is all that is associated with the Pope that is "destroyed" in any way.

The Philatelic and Numismatic Office of the Governorate of Vatican City State ("Ufficio Filatelico e Numismatico" or UFN) continues to sell previously printed stamps until the stock runs out, just like any postal service.

Even the much-sought Sede Vacante stamps, which are issued only in limited quantities during the period between the end of one pontificate and the election of a new Pope, are still sold by the UFN until the stock runs out--and are not withdrawn from sale when the new Pope takes office, as some may think.

Your cover was either CTO from the Vatican UFN as a souvenir, or someone affixed previously issued stamps to a postcard and had it cancelled on request, but either way the stamps were still valid for cancellation in 1997 even though Paul VI passed away in 1978.

--Kevin

Hi Horamakhet:

Nice card. Thanks for sharing.

KirkS

p.s. I removed the "[URL=...] and [/URL] tags from your post. You only need the IMG part -- not sure what's going on with Photobucket. I'm not a user, so others know more than I

Kirk, Flickr generates the BBCode in a similar way, and there's always this "extra" stuff... I assume to provide a link to the user's photostream and get the name of the website included in the post. I either delete everything but the ["IMG"] tags (if I'm not worried about providing a clicky link to the larger images) or everything after the first ["/URL"] set (if I want the clicky link). I have noticed that the Flickr-generated code does not include quotation marks around the actual url, so I have to add those.

Hi Stamp Mole and thanks for the answer it is very helpful, only wish I could find bookmarks like that all the time.
KirkS, It is only of late that photobucket is playing up.

If I delete the URL wont it delete the photo as well.
Horamakhet

Photobucket is generating a "pair" of nested tags. They look something like this:

[url=blah...blah] [img=blah...blah] [/img] [/url]

To post here, you need only paste the IMG tag (the part I put in bold). The URL tags should be deleted.

Kirk