Les Maximaphiles Français, the French association of maximum card collectors, put forward the idea in 2018, of a non-competitive philatelic exhibition of maximum cards, in an attempt to promote this collecting field. This exhibition is known as 'é-max' (événement maximaphile) and the first show was held in Valenciennes (see article, also published in VARIABLE 51).
		In 2019, Les Maximaphiles Français celebrated the 75th anniversary of the association and proposed an exhibition in the Paris region. The Club Philatélique de Vélizy took up the challenge, and the event was held over the weekend of November 30th and December 1st, at the Centre Maurice Ravel in Vélizy-Villacoublay, a town southwest of Paris, in Île-de-France.

Although the exhibition was mainly focused on maximum cards, with about thirty collections on display, GAPHIL also organized an Île-de-France philatelic championship. The event was complemented by a few stands with stamp and postcards dealers, philatelic associations, and a local designer specializing in aeronautics, Damien Charrit.

		As in 2018, Phil@poste supported this initiative by releasing a special vignette LISA for the philatelic event. And like in 2018, the designer was Claude Perchat, who attended the exhibition over the weekend on the stand of the association l'Art du Timbre Gravé.

The composition is devoted to aviation, with the pictures of two planes; the historic Breguet XIV, built in Vélizy, and the modern Falcon 2000, one of the airplanes operating from the nearby air base and used to transport the President of the French Republic and other VIPs.

Phil@poste produced 15,000 labels with this design, printed on thermal self-adhesive paper, with phosphorescent vertical stripes at the edges of the design.

		The Breguet XIV (left) is a French biplane bomber and reconnaissance aircraft introduced in 1917 and used during the First World War. The Dassault Falcon 2000 (below) is a French twin-engine business jet introduced in 1989 and developed by Dassault Aviation.

As on previous occasions, the local La Poste set up a temporary post office at the exhibition hall, where visitors were able to obtain the two special postmarks created for the event; a general exhibition postmark with the images of both planes, and another commemorating the 75 years of the Maximaphiles Françaises association.

La Poste also installed an IER NABANCO postal kiosk, with thermal imprint, for the printing of the new vignette d'affranchissement.

		The installation of only a single kiosk, compounded by connectivity problems during card payment operations (the only payment option available), caused long queues for collectors over the weekend.

As with other recent philatelic events, the technician who installed the machine selected the 'philatelic' program blocking the printing of the 2D Datamatrix code and the La Poste logo on the stamps, thus only enabling the printing of shipment type indicators and face value. Throughout the exhibition, the machine's connection to the postal network was intermittent, enabling (or not) the purchase of stamps for tracked mail ('Suivi'), with their respective barcode labels. It was however, only possible to purchase stamps with a face value at or above 0.86 EUR, the current postage rate for economy domestic mail.

Inland economic mail - CC    ECOPLI	Inland priority mail (D+2) - DD    LETTRE VERTE
Inland priority mail (D+1) AA    LETTRE PRIORITAIRE	International priority mail IP    LETTRE PRIORITAIRE INTERNATIONALE

Inland tracked 'Ecopli' mail - CC    ECOPLI + barcode label 'Sticker suivi'