(100 and) Thirteen - lucky for some!

Andras Csapo visited my blog after I sent him the link, asking whether I could feature his stamps.

"I would be pleased if you did so," Andras replied, "I . . . found there the letter and name of John Smith - I exchanged stamps with him in February."

The two share an interest in birds on stamps. Andras asked me for a selection of such stamps

 and also those that feature sports from anywhere in the world.  I chose a few from countries that sounded quite exotic to Andras - New Zealand, Japan, Kiribati, South Africa, Papua New Guinea, Singapore and Fiji - and they looked quite attractive, if I say so myself. 

The Hungarian stamps that my friend sent me first, a generous 113 instead of 100, live up to what I remembered from my boyhood, when I first started collecting. Then, Hungary and Poland had the largest, most colorful images. I know now that Hungary at least still does. 

I arranged them on the coffee table (photograph to come) and they easily covered more than half of it. I looked up some of them in my 1987 Stanley Gibbons catalogue, but they weren't easy to find. Up to 1985 the country has put out 3669 stamps (not counting the postage dues etc). Amazing! They must be a great letter-writing nation.