The sharp eyed among you will have noticed that the panorama above, unlike most other pages, is not a Welsh scene. In fact it is the Mississippi at Memphis. Why should this be so? These stamps were souvenir stamps of an Event held during 1998 at Porthcawl. And this event marked the 50th anniversary of a little known fact. The Prestwick stopover in 1960 was not the first time Elvis Presley stood on British soil. In fact he spent a few days in Wales on his way to military service in Germany. The Welsh ELvis festiVAL marked the stay with a Welsh language Elvis impersonator week. The stamps show a mix of 1958 and 1998. There is Elvis on The Sizzler at Porthcawl Coney Beach amusement park, and the recording he made with the Aberkenfig Male Voice Choir, a Welsh Version of All Through The Night, perhaps the World’s rarest record. There is a a film poster for a Welsh remake of Blue Hawaii, entitled Llanelli Glas, and a list of Elvis’s biggest hits in Welsh.

Complete sheets of these stamps are hard to come by, but the pinnacle of the set has to be the Artist Archive Proof Sheet, on glossy paper with enlarged images of the stamps.