Dutch semipostal stamps honor Lego 90th anniversary

By Jay Bigalke

The 90th anniversary of the Lego Group, the toy building-brick company founded in 1932, will be honored on stamps to be issued Oct. 9 in the Netherlands.

The new souvenir sheet of five is the latest Child Welfare semipostal issue. The Netherlands began issuing Child Welfare semipostal stamps in 1924, and schoolchildren started selling them door-to-door in 1948.

Each nondenominated stamp is inscribed with a “1” for the domestic mail rate and includes a €0.50 surtax. Proceeds from the surtax are donated to projects of the Foundation for Children’s Welfare Stamps (Stichting Kinderpostzegels Nederland).

The five se-tenant (side-by-side) stamps in the souvenir sheet feature a scene with buildings in the background and Lego characters on frozen water in the foreground. The stamp at top left shows two bicyclists, and two skateboarders and a mailbox are on the stamp at top right.

The larger stamp in the middle shows a man in a wheelchair, a dog, two miniature figures standing next to a boom box, and a pair of ice skaters.

The bottom left stamp features two Lego characters sledding, and the bottom right stamp illustrates a Lego girl character holding the hand of a nervous ice skater.

A blue bird, two squirrels, a cat and a seagull are shown in the selvage of the souvenir sheet.

“On 27 September there will be a special event for the issue of the stamps,” Sacha van Hoorn of PostNL told Linn’s in a e-mail. “This will be organized by Child Welfare Stamps.”

To order this year’s Child Welfare semipostal stamps, visit PostNL’s online shop.

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