Tusass Greenland Filatelia, Greenland’s philatelic service, first released in 2019 the ongoing excellent annual series of issues dedicated to showcasing the Arctic wildlife that inhabits the island; polar bears, sled dogs, seals, walruses and white-tailed eagles.
In 2024, this series is dedicated to the Arctic or polar fox (Vulpes lagopus), a carnivorous mammal of the canid family. Arctic foxes change their fur throughout the year; white and long in winter and greyish-brown and shorter in summer.
The series is again illustrated with four photographs by Carsten Egevang, a biologist and researcher at Greenland’s Nature Institute in Nuuk who also took the photographs used in earlier series.
The rolls of thermal self-adhesive labels are manufactured by the Danish company Limo Labels A/S, with flexographic printing and with perforations around the illustrations only. The labels come affixed on a yellow release liner. To the right of the label there is a white strip with a security background with the name of the postal administration, tusass, which is available for the printing of the stamp’s data.
Previously Tusass Greenland Filatelia has released its series of variable value stamps in mid-November, but in 2024 brought forward the issue date to coincide with its participation in HAFNIA 2024, the major European stamp exhibition.
Organised by the Copenhagen Philatelic Club (Kjøbenhavns Philatelist Klub – KPK), this major exhibition commemorated the 400th anniversary of the establishment of the Danish post office in 1624 by King Christian IV.
It was held from October 17th to 20th 2024 at Øksnehallen, a former cattle market transformed into an events and exhibition space near Copenhagen Central Railway Station.
This great philatelic event, with an extensive programme of lectures, presentations and activities, attracted thousands of visitors over the four days, bucking the trend of recent philatelic exhibitions in this city. On the commercial side, the organisers set up some 40 stands, of which only 7 were occupied by philatelic services, some of which left on the second day or were unable to attend due to problems with customs.
Always a major participant at the main philatelic events in this city, Tusass Greenland Filatelia presented the new ‘Arctic Foxes’ series and set up three units for the printing of variable value stamps on its large stand at HAFNIA 24. The picture on the right shows the two small aCon desktop printers (codes e4c and erG) and the GL01 DKU kiosk.
As in previous years, the new series was printed with the aCon printers (left strip below) and the Intelligent AR’s DKU desktop kiosk, both using the same rolls of labels but with very different imprints, as can be seen in the images.
Tusass Greenland Filatelia sold strips of the new series printed with the DKU kiosk with the code GL01 with two varieties. The imprint ‘Greenland Post’ is the permanent imprint of the machine installed at the Tusass Greenland Filatelia service centre in Otterup, Denmark (see receipt), while ‘HAFNIA 24’ is the special imprint of the equipment moved for the four days to the Copenhagen exhibition. In both cases, the first block of the bottom code indicates that the stamps have been printed in Denmark (DODK24).
On the date of release, this machine was programmed to issue stamps with four face values only, 16.00, 22.00, 25.00 and 34.00 DKK, corresponding to the current basic mail tariffs for economy and priority domestic mail, and priority mail to European countries and the rest of the world, respectively (see table below).
With the equipment having been installed at HAFNIA 24, the strips on sale with the ‘Greenland Post’ imprint and first day of issue receipt were naturally printed prior to the exhibition.
First day cover with the ‘Greenland Post‘ imprint and ‘Tasiilaq’ datestamp
First day cover with the ‘HAFNIA 24‘ imprint and exhibition special postmark
(English edition rewritten by J. Gareze – December 2024)