What do toilet paper and facemasks have in common?

Today I have another surprise for you. Another very good friend has volunteered to write something for us. So thank you Jean Wang for joining us.

For collectors of medical philately, the pandemic has provided lots of fodder, with so far over 100 official stamp issues, slogan machine cancels and meter marks, pictorial postmarks and postal stationery, among others. The stamp issues have covered a wide variety of pandemic-related themes, including thanking essential workers, promoting public health measures, spreading messages of solidarity and support, and more recently promoting vaccination. Among these, two issues from Austria stand out: a semi-postal souvenir sheet issued in October 2020 and a stamp issued in September 2021.

Both of these COVID-19 issues are made of unusual material, something for which Austria Post has developed a reputation. They have previously issued stamps made of porcelain, leather, glass, fabric, plastic, wood, and an aluminum plastic composite (ski tip), as well as stamps with crystals, seeds, pearls, or rock dust affixed.

Austria toilet paper souvenir sheet

Their first COVID-19 stamp issue, a souvenir sheet titled “Distance that brings us together”, promotes social distancing and depicts a baby elephant (printed in silver foil) as a way to help people judge a distance of 1 meter. To provide perspective, the sheet also illustrates a small insect (1 mm), a fly (1 cm), and a mouse (1 dm - a decimeter is 10cm) (note – objects are not to scale!). Why a baby elephant, you ask? During the first wave of the pandemic, Austria encouraged (and later legally required) people to stay ‘a baby elephant apart’. This symbol of social responsibility was quite popular – in fact, ‘baby elephant’ (or ‘Babyelefant’ as it is commonly written in German) was named Austria’s word of the year for 2020.

What makes the souvenir sheet truly unique, however – and a mandatory item for collectors of unusual stamps – is the material on which it is printed. Austria Post has a somewhat irreverent sense of humor (see, for example, their Brexit stamp on the left, which poked fun at the delayed withdrawal of the UK from the European Union). As a nod to the panic buying of toilet paper that occurred at the beginning of the pandemic by people worried about the impact of lockdowns on their personal hygiene, this souvenir sheet is printed on actual 3-ply toilet paper. The postal agency teamed up with a toilet paper manufacturer to plan and test the production process over many months. To overcome the obvious problems of the material’s fragility and its assured destruction upon getting wet, a self-adhesive film was laminated onto the back; just peel and stick, no licking necessary. 

Toilet paper strips. Photo credit: Leonhard Foeger (Reuters)

The souvenir sheets, each one the size of a single sheet of toilet paper, were issued in strips of three, with the perforations resembling those of toilet paper rolls. Not uncommonly, the perforations separating the souvenir sheets do not line up perfectly with the perforations separating the sheets of toilet paper, so meticulous collectors can find ‘varieties’ of the souvenir sheet with an extra line of perforations. To balance the cheekiness of the material chosen, Austria Post added a surcharge to support charitable causes.

Austria’s second pandemic-related stamp is also manufactured from unusual material and promotes another public health measure: the use of facemasks, which have become a mainstay in reducing the spread of COVID-19 in indoor spaces. In January 2021, in the midst of their third lockdown and in response to increasing numbers of cases caused by the more contagious variants of the coronavirus, Austria mandated the use of medical-grade FFP2 (Filtering Face Piece) masks, which are more protective than cloth or surgical masks, on public transport and in shops, businesses and hospitals. 

As a light-hearted reminder of how easily we can protect ourselves from infection, Austria Post last month issued a facemask-shaped stamp made from the same material used to make FFP2 masks in Europe. Each stamp is composed of two layers of fleece embroidered in the shape of an FFP2 mask and cut out with laser technology, with embroidered ear loops attached on both sides. A red coronavirus is embroidered on the stamp along with details such as the folds and nose clip. Like the toilet paper souvenir sheet, the facemask stamp has a self-adhesive backing for easy application.
 
While some collectors might consider such non-traditional stamp issues frivolous and unbecoming of a global health crisis that is now approaching its second anniversary, these two issues from Austria do serve to highlight important public health measures and will likely reach a broader audience due to their unusual qualities. Humor helps us cope with stress, and as the pandemic drags on, Austria Post’s efforts to make us smile can make the world feel a little less gloomy, one stamp at a time.

Dr Jean Wang is a hematologist and leukemia researcher in Toronto, Canada with an interest in medical philately