Saunder's Gull (Larus saundersi) - maximum card from Vietnam, mailed later as a naked postcard (no envelope) to me by my friend Nguyen

I like very much this MC, my first from Vietnam. It was sent later, not on the date of the creation of the MC, but that's no problem.

It is really circulated thru the mail, from my friend Nguyen in Vietnam to me in USA - that's a rare thing for a maximum card.

Usually, maximum cards are not circulated as postcards, to avoid postal damage, theft, etc.

They are pure (maybe too pure), only for philatelic purposes, away from the harsh reality of the postal system.

There can be thousands of identical, Postal Administration-issued official maximum cards with a certain design.

But when you receive one as a traveled postcard, with "postal battle scars" maybe, then that is personalized to YOU, as a gesture of friendship between philatelists/stamp collectors. And the favor is returned, of course.

Even better is when you receive or send a UNICATE/UNIKAT/UNICAT maximum card, of which there is only 1 in the world, created by a collector/maximaphilist.

I like to send out nice items, too. Even very nice...

In fact, I should create a blog: "My REVERSE COLLECTION - stamps, postcards, postmarks and maximum cards that I HAVE SENT (not those that I received) to partners/friends from around the world".

In that blog, I will upload images from their online collections , and from my records of what I have sent them.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larus_saundersi

Star Wars maximum card (non-traditional) made with a custom-made postcard

This custom-made postcard is a collage.

Darth Vader, with collage(n). :)

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Happy PFF (Postcard Friendship Friday)!

Please visit: http://thebestheartsarecrunchy.blogspot.com/

"What Happens Next: Our Look Ahead" - Forbes predictions for the next 10 years

Very interesting predictions, estimates, educated guesses, wild guesses, far-out guesses, naive guesses, clairvoyant guesses, delusional guesses and realistic guesses from many specialists - a cool article from Forbes.com. Read it now (including slides captions), and again in 10 years. You'll say Wow!, for a number of reasons...:)


"We asked our staff and contributors to forecast some of the noteworthy events of the next 10 years, a vision of the coming decade sketched from real data, projections and facts whenever possible--though we've injected a dose of rigorous science fiction to fill the gaps.

Add your own predictions in the comments section, and vote on the likelihood of future events in our interactive poll. Be bold. As Malcolm Forbes said, "Being right half the time beats being half right all the time." And time has proved him right."

http://www.forbes.com/2010/09/07/technology-energy-politics-opinions-contributors-2020_land.html?boxes=Homepagelighttop

For example, Forbes.com says this:
"2016: Virtual Jobs

America's first virtual world employee farm opens in South Carolina. Minimum-wage workers serve as bodyguards, gold harvesters in online games.".

Well, I think we could all come up with some ideas - better or worse...

Here's a maximum card that I created in 2006, while attending the Washington, D.C. World Philatelic Exhibition [Exposition].
It is a non-traditional MC, since the traditional FIP maximaphily rules say that an MC cannot have an abstract concordance of subject/theme/topic between stamp, postcard and postmark.
But I think that that rule is terribly wrong. [OMG!]
Yes, I said it. :)
Topical stamp collecting, or topical philately, means collecting by the theme.
In this case, I'd say the theme is "the stimulation of the mind - thoughts, emotions, reactions, actions..."
And yes, that's an abstract thing.
So what?
I still like my maximum card, no matter what. :)
Also, it's an UNICATE/UNIKAT/UNICAT maximum card. Only 1 copy/specimen in the whole world (I guess), since I created only 1.
Have you ever seen another one, identical (down to the pictorial postmark)? Show and tell. :)

The stamp shows a guy enjoying a Virtual Reality helmet - a world between your ears, so to speak.

I used an AD CARD, a category that so many deltiologists [postcard collectors] hate, out of principle!

But I judge a postcard by its individual merits, not by the category it belongs to.

In 2006, I made [between my ears...in my mind :)] my own prediction about Tower Records, who paid for this AD CARD.

"You will soon go out of business...Why should we pay for a whole music CD, when all we want is 1 (one) specific song?"

http://www.zazzle.com/why_stamp_postage-172279254387759379?rf=238693463283865848