Earlier we could show you a postcard with postmark of the blessing of Harley riders and their bikes by the Pope, on the occasion of the 110th anniversary of HD. In the mean time we know a bit more about this issue.

The Pope obtained a present from Harley-Davidson: a 1585cc Harley-Davidson Dyna Super Glide and a leather jacket in HD-colours.

The Pope's signature

After having admired the machine for some time the Pope grabbed a marker and put his signature on the tank. In his turn the Pope donated the Harley for a good cause, and let it be sold on an auction by Bonham's during the Retromobile week. The benefits are for Caritas Roma, and they were not bad.
The Harley was put in the auction catalogue with an estimated value of 12 to 15000 euro, but it was already sure that it would become clearly more. At February 6th the motorcycle was auctioned and raised the nice sum of 241500 euro.

The postcards that we want for our collection, after a painting made by David Uhl that was also given to the Pope, have all been provided with the special postmark in Vatican City and were packed in a cover with the same image of the painting. For this image a 1948 Harley-Davidson FL panhead served as a model on the St. Peter square.

David Uhl donates his painting to the Pope

The same postmark could also be obtained on 'normal' postal items.

All doves in the car

Bletchley Park Post Office is already for some time active in the hype of issueing Royal Mail Smilers sheets. Also in 2005, when they issued a sheet with 10 poppy stamps to honour the carrier-pigeons that served in the militairy army in the first World War. They have been desperately searching for pictures of these animals in action.

The lady who had to compose the sheet found a lot of usable pictures at the National Pigeon Organisation. But unfortunately, the first picture on the sheet is not from the first World War and doesn't even show Englishmen. It's a picture of 2 German soldiers, made in 1932 in the neighbourhood of Berlin. The 3-wheeler seems me to be a KSK (Karl Slevogt Kleinwagen) from 1930 with a Rinne 200 cc engine..

Gagarin

Russian Maximum Card with stamp with ZIL-111V (in the Russian alphabet our V is written as B)

During his homage ride as first man in space the Russian Kosmonaut Gagarin in the ZIL 111-V has been escorted by police motorcyclists on, yeah what will it be: the Dnepr K750 or the Ural M72. However, we find the procession on the Russian maximum card of the stamp with the ZIL.
Already earlier we could find Gagarin in our collection, as the same procession is depicted on the margin of sheet # 6:

The complete sheet

Detail of the lower left corner with the escorting motorcycles

The car issue is a joint issue with the principality of Monaco, but I have not yet seen a Monacan card with an image that could be interesting for us.

The stamps as issued by Monaco

The stamps as issued by Russia

Juri Gagarin in the ZIL seen from another angle

Motormouse

or more precise his creator Joseph Barbera, has passed away in Los Angeles at the age of 95 (December 18th 2006). In 1969 sixteen episodes of Motormouse & Autocat have been made. This was enough to give motorcyclists worldwide their nickname.
The cartoon was most of all a racing version of Tom & Jerry, which had been created in the 1930-ies by the same Barbera (and his colleague Bill Hanna). The fun was mostly in the bizar cars that Autocat used to chase Motormouse.

Quality-wise the series couldn't touch the old Tom & Jerry movies, but this holds in fact for all work of Hanna and Barbera. When MGM disposed of its cartoon division, Hanna and Barbera started in 1957 their own production company, which mainly aimed at making cartoon movies for television. This led to a large series of cheaply drawn, but world famous cartoons, of which The Flintstones, Yogi Bear and Scooby-Doo are the best known.

The block from Mozambique celebrates his 100th anniversary in 2011.

Detail with Motormouse

Not the first one

The Austrian Post thought to have a scoop by issueing a new stamp, a rose printed on porcelain. Forget it!
We motorcycle stamp collectors already have such a jewel in our collection. Editions Vents d'Ouest let already a few years ago put their heroes from the Joe Bar Team on porcelain. Here the tile with Ducati 900 SS rider Guido Brasletti:

Guido "Pepe" Brasletti, always riding a Ducati, thanks his name to "guidon bracelet" which is the French name for clip-ons.
By the way, the personalities from the Joe Bar cartoons are based on existing motorcyclists.

Model of Guido Brasletti and his Ducati 900 SS

For the total collectors

In 2002 the Korean branch of the F.I.C.C. organized the 64th International Camping & Caravanning rally in the beautiful Donghae. The first rally was held in 1933 in England for tents, camping vehicles (caravans and campers) and cabins.
For the logo the Segway had been selected. We find the Segway both on the stamp and in the First Day Postmark that was used.

Hans de Kloet

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