Wednesday, May 06, 2020

Did you know, I sold kinderzegels while in 6th grade?

When I was in elementary school, in 6th grade, the teacher came to use and told us we would be getting the opportunity to sell kinderzegels.  Kinderzegels are semi-postal stamps, the surcharge goes to child welfare organizations. I of course said yes, partly because I started collecting stamps a year or two before this time.

The teacher gave us an envelope with some order forms, you had to go to people and ask them if they would be interested in buying some of these stamps. If they said yes, you would write down how many and their address. After they stamps were delivered to school, you would go back to deliver the stamps and pick up the money.

I don't remember how many sets I sold but I think it was at least 10 or so.  I just went to one of those buildings that gad 10 floors and maybe 30 apartments per floor. Then I would just go from door to door like a traveling salesman and tried to sell my 'goods'

I still have fond memories when I look at these stamps


These stamps were sold from November 16th until December 30th 1983

The 4 stamps issued look like this

Kinderzegels 1983

Below are the NVPH catalog numbers for these stamps as well as the number of stamps sold

1295 Ox and Donkey   3,220,838 sold
1296 Snowman            2,826,497 sold
1297 Stars                    3,492,485 sold
1298 Three Kings         3,376,834 sold

Kinderzegels 1983  block


1299 Block with 6 stamps 4,498,933 blocks sold

Based on the numbers sold, you can calculate that a good amount of money went to a good cause. For each block sold it's was a guilder and 60 cents.  I believe there were about 16 million people living in the Netherlands at that point, that is a decent number of stamps.


Here is a First Day Cover and some used blocks of 4 and 6 of the stars stamp I own

Kinderzegels 1983  FDC

I love the cancellation on the First Day Cover, here it is again a bit bigger.

Kinderzegels 1983  FDC Cancellation

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