AMERICAN ALLIGATOR MAXIMUM CARD #8, FIRST DAY OF ISSUE PICTORIAL POSTMARK, NAPLES, FLORIDA

The reptile is the American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis). The stamp is part of the Southern Florida Wetland series. Most of that area is in the Everglades National Park, Florida, a UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS). To put things into perspective, this image also shows the natural habitat, impossible to see in such great detail on a regular postcard. BONUS: The backside has a great photo of wolves. For comparison only, I uploaded a second image with a 4x6 inches postcard overlapped.

Golf ball in mouth of American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis)

Come get it, Tiger Woods!
If you come, I'll say...oh, snap!!!

Happy Thanksgiving! Maximum card: wild turkey

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! You don't have to join the Armaggedon of turkeys, though. Just "give thanks" and appreciate all the good things in your life, even if there aren't that many... "Count your blessings, not your troubles"...:)  




http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll201/dorincard/Turkey1.jpg

Non-traditional (non-FIP) maximum card: American alligator

This is a great photo of an alligator's nest!

WOA/ The LARGEST REPTILE in USA = ALLIGATOR. NON-AUTOGRAPHED MAXIMUM CARD

See you later, wally-gator? No, see you now!
"American Alligators have the strongest bite of any living animal, measured at up to 9,452 newtons (2,125 lb_f) in laboratory conditions.^[7]"


"Alligators depend on the wetlands, and in some ways the wetlands depend on them. As apex predators, they help control the population of rodents and other animals that might overtax the marshland vegetation."
"The American Alligator, Alligator mississippiensis, (known colloquially as simply gator) is one of the two living species of Alligator, a genus within the family Alligatoridae. The American Alligator is native only to the Southeastern United States, where it inhabits wetlands that frequently overlap with human-populated areas. It is larger than the other extant alligator species, the Chinese Alligator."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_alligator
Maybe a Chinese friend (but isn't blogger.com banned in China?) or another friend, or future friend, or just plain stranger could send me a Chinese alligator maximum card?
Or, if I get a simple postcard, I'll make it into a maximum card, with a matching Chinese stamp.
How can I check IF THERE IS such a stamp?
I go to my website http://dorinco.webs.com (this is the updated version of http://www.freewebs.com/dorinco - still valid) and I click on this useful link:

Great website for reptiles on stamps

http://www.reptile-stamps.de/

So I find that there are at least 3 stamp designs from China (PRC) and one from Eesti, which my general culture :D tells me it's Estonia.
Yeah, why don't I set that as a cool, although non-high-priority project for me: maximum card(s) with the Chinese alligator.


http://www.reptile-stamps.de/html/alligator.html

Maximum card: Hermann Oberth, one of the three founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics

Hermann Oberth...Tsiolkovsky...Goddard.
Sometimes, it takes more than 1 father.

"Hermann Julius Oberth (25 June 1894 – 28 December 1989), born in Transylvania, România, then part of Austria-Hungary, was a (Transylvanian Saxon) physicist and engineer, who along with the Russian Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and the American Robert H. Goddard, was one of the Founding Fathers of rocketry and astronautics. The three never were active collaborators, and in fact, never knew one another: instead, their parallel achievements occurred independently of one another."
"In the autumn of 1929, Oberth conducted a static firing of his first liquid-fueled rocket motor, which he named the Kegeldüse. He was helped in this experiment by his students at the Technical University of Berlin, one of whom was Wernher von Braun, who would later become a giant in both German and American rocket engineering from the 1940s onward, culminating with the gigantic Saturn V rockets that made it possible for men to land on the Moon in 1969 and in several following years."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Oberth

Maximum cards: Red Panda / Lesser Panda (Ailurus fulgens) from Taiwan ROC

Republic of China (ROC) = Taiwan.

People's Republic of China = (mainland) China.

The bottom MC (maximum card) is official issue of Taiwan Post - very nice.

The other maximum card was created specially for me, at my specific request, by my good friend S. in Taiwan. Thank you! :)

She is one of the best philatelic partners/friends that I have on 6 continents (nobody yet at a research base in Antarctica - I'm working on it :) ).

Starting with the existing stamp, she found a great image online (just as matching as the official image), then she asked for permission to reproduce it.

Perfect match stamp/postcard: the red panda is eating leaves.

I think those images were already released into public domain, but anyway.

Then she designed and ordered custom picture postcards.

Then she went to her post office and obtained clean local postmarks on such maximum cards. As a philatelic handback, she took them right back and sent me the whole batch in an envelope. One MC from each different design.

I love her custom MCs even more! Besides, there's only 1 MC made in each exact configuration - unless she liked them so much that she created more, for herself :D .