New Zealand stamps

Stamps are the part of each letter or postcard that we recieve. I love countries whose postal offices design nice, funny or beautiful stamps. I'm quite dissapointed by Polish stamps- regular ones  are just ugly. There were few stamp designs that won the contest for the most beautiful european stamp but those were limited editions and really hard to find in the post offices.

Today some stamps from my soon to be place of living- New Zealand

Postage stamps have been issued in New Zealand since around the 18th to 20th of July 1855 with the "Chalon head" stamps figuring Queen Victoria. The design was based on a full face portrait of the Queen in her state robes at the time of her coronation in 1837, by Alfred Edward Chalon. The stamps were initially hand cut from sheets, but from 1862 on, these sheets started being fed through automatic perforation machines. New Zealand was the first country in the world to prototype and install stamp vending machines; one was installed in the General Post Office, Wellington in 1905.