| FRANCE - 62 SALON PHILATÉLIQUE D'AUTOMNE - PARIS 2008 |
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The 2008 Salon Philatélique d'Automne (Autumn stamps fair) organized by the CNEP was held from November 6th to 9th 2008, as it is every year, at Paris Expo - Espace Champerret.
This year the Salon d'Automne had Israel as the guest of honour country, commemorating the 60th Anniversary of the creation of the state of Israel. As happens every year, during the 4 days of the Salon, there were many stamp releases, with their associated postmarks, and visitors were able to approach the designers at the usual autograph sessions and engraving demonstrations.
For more information on the previous annual Salons d'Automne, you can read the articles devoted to the editions of 2006 and 2007. |
| 9 European postal administrations (Belgium, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Spain, Switzerland, United Nations and the Vatican City), plus the DOM-TOM posts, with New Caledonia, St. Pierre et Miquelon, TAAF, Mayotte, Wallis et Futuna and Polynesia, and 85 stands of philatelic dealers, philatelic publishers and various institutions, notably La Poste, ... make the Salon d'Automne in Paris, what is considered to be, the leading annual event for French philatelists. |
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As every year, La Poste prepared a new commemorative release of vignette d'affranchissement, which could be obtained from the 5 Monétel LISA 1 vending machines temporarily installed in the Salon.
Fortunately, despite announcing that the 2007 release would be the last for which Monétel distributors would be used, and that this kind of distributor would no longer remain in service in the French post offices, it seems that discontent and complaints from collectors have persuaded La Poste to continue using these old machines at the philatelic events taking place in Paris.
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As usual in the latest issues, the design by Claude Perchat shows different images of the city such as the pavilion access to the Metro station Porte Dauphine (1900), by the architect Hector Guimard. One of the Wallace fountains (1872), and one of the bridges on the Canal Saint Martin. |
The self-adhesive labels, sized 80 x 30 mm, are manufactured in 4-colour offset by Phil@poste, with 2 phosphorescent vertical strips – one at each edge of the design.
| The fontaines Wallace are public drinking fountains, named after the English philanthropist, Richard Wallace, who designed and financed their construction. Based on Wallace's designs, the sculptor Charles-Auguste Lebourg created the first 2 models of fountains, built on cast-iron and very durable. The first of these fountains was installed in Paris in 1872, to provide public access to free and to safe drinking water. More than 100 fountains can be found in Paris, although in later years other Wallace fountains were installed in other French cities as well as in many other cities around the world. |
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| Photos: E. van Caester |
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The Monétel vending machines allow the user to obtain ATMs with any face value from the minimum programmed - 0.50 EUR (the rate for an inland domestic letter by economic post on the date of issue). It is also possible, using the scale, to obtain ATMs with a value according to weight, destination and type of the shipment. In this second case the machine prints a prefix in front of the face value that indicates the type of shipment requested by the user: E (Ecopli) for economic domestic mail, P (Prioritaire) for international high-priority post (if the destination is France then there is no prefix), or LETTRE for inland letters above 20 g. |
When considering the prefixes available, the set could be made up from the 4 values: E 0.50 EUR - 0.55 EUR - P 0.65 EUR - LETTRE 0.88 EUR, corresponding to the basic rates for economic domestic mail, priority domestic mail (without prefix), high-priority mail to Europe and high-priority domestic mail for letters above 20 g.
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| E - Inland post Economique / Ecopli |
Inland post Prioritaire |
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| P - International Priority mail - Prioritaire |
LETTRE - Inland letters above 20 g. |
The Monétel distributors can provide receipts, printed on a matching self-adhesive label similar to those used for the issue of the ATMs, giving a detailed listing of the ATMs issued, and the text is in the language selected by the user (French, English, German or Spanish).
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| Receipts with the listing of the stamps issued in the available prefixes set, and the total |
| As for errors. Well at least one roll of labels was wound onto the roll, starting from the wrong end of the long strip of labels, and was installed in one of the Monétel distributors during the first day of issue. One collector noticed that ATMs were being issued with the inverted design and notified |
the official responsible for the machines about this, who immediately replaced the faulty roll. However, on Saturday this faulty roll was brought back into use to replace an exhausted roll – but this time no one commented about it and as a result the distributor issued about 900 inverted ATMs in total.
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The 3 special date postmarks for the 62nd Salon Philatélique d'Automne.
The postmark including the design of the Wallace fountain could be used from November 7th only. |
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ATM Web - Spain and Latin American Postal Services: http://www.ateeme.net
© J. Jove - M. Sans. ATEEME. Variable value stamps study group. All rights reserved
This page was created in November 2008 and last updated:
01.12.08
. English edition rewritten by S. Goodman (28.11.2008)
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