Bicycles and Cycling

One rarely sees a pipe-smoking bicycle rider these days. This is Reunion Scott B39, a surcharged France semi-postal (B460) depicting a rural mailman in 1894.

I recently dug through a nice French collection and a goodly portion of a 1 Kg mixture of off-paper French commemoratives and boy, the French sure like bicycle stamps.  Over the next little while I'll get around to posting them.  To start with, I'll revisit the stamps that were shown in the very first post of this thread.  In this case, they're used stamps (one with a very-much-socked-on-the-nose cancellation).  An added bonus with these two is that the margin has been left behind on them - I'm sure well over half of these shaped stamps that I've come across (circles, hearts, rugby balls, etc) have had the margin removed.  The French aren't quite as picky as the English as far as removing every last piece of selvedge is concerned (how many postally used Machins have you ever seen with selvedge?) but they're not far behind, so I was happy to see the margins left on these two.  The Scott catalogue explicitly prices them that way without mentioning how much of a deduction there would be for stamps without margins.  Michel doesn't say anything, neither does SG, Yvert or Maury / Dallay.



Ryan

Nicaragua 40c violet, perf. 12 air post stamp issued July 1949 (Scott C304).

Russia issued this 40k red brown stamp (Scott 1379) on August 7, 1949 as one of an eight stamp sports set (1376-1383).

It isn't often I will get to add a stamp from the Saar in one of our topical threads, so I'll grab the chance here.  This stamp celebrates the 1955 World Championships in cyclo-cross, which is a sort of obstacle course race on road-racing bikes with knobby tires (it's a winter sport, lots of mud and snow).  Also, two more from the pile of French stamps.  The Paris-Roubaix race is famous for its cobblestones and attendant sore rumps and broken bikes (and awful weather and continual crashes and the occasional racer zipping under a railway barrier to beat an oncoming train).  It's pretty much the most miserable day you could possibly spend on a bike.  Attached below, a 1976 documentary appropriately entitled "A Sunday in Hell".







Ryan

Here we are at the tail end of another scanner load, two more cycling stamps from the French hoard (OK, one of them is a bit tenuous, the bike is hardly the main focus of the stamp) and two from the United Kingdom's millennium series.  Boy, those European / international rate millennium stamps are sure tough to come across in good condition.  Most of the ones I see are dinged up one way or another (hooray for white borders around stamps, they hide so many of the perf teeth that have the top surface torn off them).





Ryan

Hi Rodney

"pushies"? New word for my Oz Dictionary

Jerry B

Hi Rodney

You think you are left behind!    

Probably a local NSW word. I refuse to start a new dictionary for NSW. The Oz one is getting big enough.
I did find this link awhile ago: cobbersbushband

It also has a dictionary, but, it doesn't seem to be complete as most of your expressions are not in it:'(  dictionary
 

Jerry B

There's always a time to jump aboard the carbon fibre  

I rise at 5am,  throw the  tredley on the back of the ute,
6 km out of town,  there is a large hill,
I go up and down it, repeatedley, until I am pooped.
(Boring I know)

Leftmost stamp on a two-stamp cycling souvenir sheet issued by the U.S. on November 1, 1996 (Scott 3119a). Both stamps are tagged, perf. 11x11.1 and 50c in denomination. The background of the other stamp from the sheet is blue green.

In 2013, France celebrated the 100th anniversary of the iconic Tour de France with a seven stamp set. Here is one of them that I have on a postcard.

Five self-adhesive, untagged, serpentine die cut 9.8 vertical, presorted standard rate stamps (Scott 3228, 14Aug1998, 10 cent) depicting a modern bicycle on a cover mailed from Pheonix, Arizona in 2018.

And two later ones from Bénin:

Here is the full block for that issue: