Some Sower Material Unearthed at the Spring Mega-Event
by Kris Haggblom

I had a rare chance to get to a big show, the ASDA Spring Postage Stamp Mega-Event™, recently. There were some wonderful exhibits, but my time was very limited so I concentrated on the dealer tables. I went in with a strict budget but no real plan other than concentrating on Sower material. I'd like to share here some of the items I picked up while blowing that budget to bits. There's no particular order in this presentation - just a kind of show-n-tell.

We'll start with some of the, shall we say... simpler, items. The attractive booklet issued by France for Stamp Day (16 March 1996) makes nice use of the Sower design, both on the stamps (at left) as well as the booklet's cover (above). The inside of the cover presents a short history of the design and the original issue. This was the end piece glaringly missing from my sower collection.

The only single stamp I picked up is this 30c lined sower with a bureaux auxiliaires (Lambert & Nilsestuen type A7b) cancel of Bône, Constantine that a dealer who knows my interest in the issue presented - though he had it marked as Constantinople. "Not quite the same," I said, wishing I could learn to keep my mouth shut sometimes.