S25, S25.1, S25.2, S25.3 - Sport for Peace - Beijing Olympics: Four Different Varieties

Thanks to our friend in Geneva, we now have confirmation of the fourth color/gum combination; the purple band with cream gum (S25.3). He also provides us with a clue as to when this began. For S23 and S24 (NY standard postage 2008), the 42 cent United Nations personalized sheet has blue-green gum (S23) and the 94 cent United Nations personalized sheet comes with the cream gum. I had not noticed this before, and can confirm I have these combinations. Check your copies, I would like to find out if these exist in different gum formats.

Davo Album Update

Thanks to Henry Gitner, I now have a copy of the new DAVO United Nations personalized sheet album. This album is the perfect place to store and display my collection. This DAVO album contain removable pages which allow you to work on your sheets and then place them in archival-quality clear stamp mounts. These seem to hold the sheets firmly in place, without any damage. This also allows you to insert pages where you might want to display sheet varieties.

The album itself is a black, high quality, heavy stock. It includes a dust case, to protect the sheets and the binder itself from outside influences. Each sheet has a gray-scale picture of the relevant sheet and the album included four extra blank sheets to help cover the varieties. Extra sheets can be purchased from DAVO. It is a very impressive album.

My only quibble is that the Microcredit sheet is assigned to 2003 instead of 2005. DAVO uses a numbering scheme that starts with the year, followed by the sheets in the order they were issued. So, for 2003, the first United Nations personalized sheet is given the designation 2003-1 (S1). Their designations are fine, they've just misplaced the Microcredit sheet (unless they know something more about this sheet than we do!). Perhaps this can be corrected when the pages are reprinted.

For now, I am very, very happy to have a copy of this album.

S25, S25.1, S25.2 - Sport for Peace - Beijing Olympics: Three Different Varieties

This issue has gotten a little more complicated. We have now identified three different varieties of the 2008 Sport for Peace Beijing Olympics United Nations personalized sheet. The following sheet numbers have been assigned:

1. S25 - Blue band, blue-green gum
   
2. S25.1 - Blue band, cream gum
   
3. S25.2 - Purple band, blue-green gum
   

The only variety that has not been identified is one with a purple band and cream gum. To date, the blue band, blue-green gum variety (S25) seems to be the most common. Any reports of other varieties would be most welcome.