On 11th June, the UNPA issued a souvenir sheet to celebrate the China 2019 World Stamp Exhibition which began on 11th June and will go on till 17th June in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. Another souvenir sheet would be released on 31st July to commemorate Singpex 2019 that will take place from 31st July to 4th August in Singapore. Both the souvenir sheets feature the twin pandas Qiqi and Diandian, who are the first U.N. Development Programme global animal goodwill ambassadors. The pandas were born in 2015 at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in China.

Both the souvenir sheets have three stamps each. The $1.15 stamp featuring Qiqi is for use from the post office at U.N. headquarters in New York City; the 2 francs stamp showing Qiqi and Diandian is for use from the post office at the Palais des Nations in Geneva; and the €1.80 stamp depicting Diandian is for use from the Vienna International Centre in Vienna. The stamp designs are identical in both sheets. The selvage designs for both the sheets show different illustrations of pandas at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, logos of the exhibitions, and the U.N. emblem.

The stamps and souvenir sheets are designed by Rorie Katz of the UN. The illustrations in the selvage are created by Shenyong Wang from China. 32,000 souvenir sheets for the China World Stamp Expo and 23,000 souvenir sheets for Singpex were printed by offset by Cartor Security Printing of France.

Visit philamart to view and purchase variety of stamps from all over the world.

Image Courtesy: The UNPA