France. Exposition Philatelique Interregionale

With nearly 3,000 members, PHILAPOSTEL is the main philatelic association in France. It brings together employees of La Poste and France Télécom, who also are philatelists and collectors of other items such as postcards or telephone cards. It was founded in 1952 with the name Postiers Philatélistes, and it is made up of 25 regional or local associations. PHILAPOSTEL is a member of both the F.F.A.P. and FILAPOSTEL, an international association with members in different European countries.

In 2009, the 57th general assembly of PHILAPOSTEL was held on April 3rd and 4th at Bollwiller, in the Haut-Rhin department, Alsace. For the first time, they took advantage of the meeting to organize an inter-regional exhibition and a bourse multi-collection or collectors fair, and requested La Poste to issue a new commemorative LISA vignette.

The exhibition and fair was held on April 4th and 5th at the Salle polyvalente in the nearby town of Raedersheim. A large number of exhibitors and national dealers participated in the collector event, as well as La Poste, with a temporary post office, where visitors were able to buy the new LISA and various other philatelic products: in particular, a collection of 10 Prêt-à-Poster -or prefranked envelopes- (above) which had Jeannala and Seppala illustrations, a comic with two cute Alsace kids, created by David Grandmaire.

For the issue of the new commemorative issue, La Poste installed 2 IER - LISA 2 thermal printing stamp vending machines next to the temporary post office. Above the machines were notices indicating that the minimum face value purchase was 0.51 EUR (the current national postage rate for economic mail - Ecopli), although the machines were not restricted to this as a minimum value as it was possible to obtain ATMs with any face value from 0.01 EUR.
25,000 labels (25 rolls) were produced in total, one of the smaller print runs for such issues, and which were sold out early in the afternoon of Sunday, April 5th.

The labels were manufactured by Phil@poste using 4-colour offset printing on self-adhesive thermal paper and which incorporated a phosphorescent vertical strip at each edge of the design. The ATM size is 80 x 30 mm. The designer is Marie-Hélène Lauff, the PHILAPOSTEL administrative secretary.

The composition includes different themes related to the Alsace region. The traditional architecture with the maison à colombage -with a timber structure; the vineyards -Alsace is a region producing very good wines, especially whites, and the stork, a bird present throughout the region.

After the change of postal rates on March 2nd 2009, and the changes in the program of the LISA 2 distributors, this is the first commemorative issue that could be obtained with up to 7 imprints of different shipment types. In the first weight step, the face values are: 0.51 - economic domestic mail up to 20 g. (Ecopli); 0.56 EUR LETTRE PRIORITAIRE - high-priority domestic mail up to 20 g.; 0.70 EUR PRIORITAIRE - high-priority mail to the European Union and Switzerland); 1.50 EUR MINI MAX – the new high-priority shipping option for small packets, up to 2 cm. thick and weighing up to 1 kilo; R L1 4.36 EUR AR - R L2 4.96 EUR AR - R L3 5.86 EUR AR (3 options for registered mail, with acknowledgement of receipt). We imagine that very few collectors bought the complete set ... with thermal printing and a face value over 18 EUR !. So the most common set is made-up by the first 4 values: 0.51 - 0.56 EUR LETTRE PRIORITAIRE - 0.70 EUR PRIORITAIRE - 1.50 EUR MINI MAX.


Inland economic mail	Inland priority mail - LETTRE PRIORITAIRE

Priority mail to zone 1: European Union and Switzerland PRIORITAIRE	Inland priority mail - Small parcels MINI MAX

During the 2 days of the exhibition it was possible to obtain a commemorative postmark, illustrated with 2 of the themes that also appeared on the ATM issue.

Photos: E. van Caester