*** ESPERANTO POSTER STAMPS AND LABELS ***

NOTE that I am talking about "Poster Stamps" - not "Postage Stamps." The items I collect are NOT valid for postage, and were created to be stuck on the back of an envelope, or to be pasted on the message area of a postcard - they advertise or promote something, and were often given away free as a premium, or distributed to supporters of the event or cause or place they depict.
There ARE Esperanto postage stamps, issued to honor the movement or its founder - I do NOT show those in these pages. Well, OK, just one, the item to the right, a favorite of mine for its depiction of the Tower of Babel, which I find ironic. The American Topical Association's Esperanto checklist has 193 entries, so that's the approximate number of postal issues with an Esperanto theme. No one has compiled a catalog of Esperanto poster stamps, so it's impossible to say how many there are, but there must be many thousands.	Esperanto POSTAGE stamp, Belgium, 1982
Esperanto poster stamp, 1905	Like most other poster stamps, most Esperanto poster stamps were issued in the first half of the twentieth century, when they were a popular collectible. The earliest Esperanto stamp I have found is the one to the left, issued in 1905, perhaps in conjunction with the first International Esperanto Congress of that year, though it does not mention the event. Its text translates "Esperanto and Trade," presumably suggesting that speaking Esperanto will assist one in international commerce.
Esperanto stamps have many purposes: Some simply advertise and promote the language itself. Some advertise Esperanto events. Others advertise events having nothing to do with Esperanto, like Olympics Games. The list of links on the left at the top of this page shows all the ways I found that Esperanto has been used on poster stamps. Click on any of those to see examples of that group.	Esperantist philatelic exhibition, Budapest, 1918
Certain themes and symbols occur frequently on Esperanto stamps:
	The most common image is the green star, which was chosen as the symbol of Esperanto. So there are many Esperanto stamps with nothing but the star, sometimes with an "E" or the word "Esperanto" in the center. Many other Esperanto stamps include the star somewhere in the design, so that is often the tipoff that Esperanto is the topic.
Doctor Zamenhof, the founder of the language, is another popular theme.
"Esperanto joins nations"	And Esperanto's value in creating cooperation and unity is the theme of many other stamps.
The most common overall theme I have found on Esperanto stamps is simply publicity for the movement itself.