Following on from the Vertou exhibition (see article, also published in VARIABLE 51), the 43rd MARCOPHILEX was held over the weekend of October 12th and 13th 2019, in the 'Les foréziales' multipurpose hall in Montrond-Les-Bains, a city of about 5000 inhabitants in the department of the Loire, west of Lyon.
		You can read articles on the earlier MARCOPHILEX exhibitions since 2012 both on this website and in the various issues of VARIABLE.

MARCOPHILEX is the name of the annual exhibition of stamps and postal history organized by the Union Marcophile, in this instance in collaboration with the Association Philatélique de Saint-Étienne. In addition to the philatelic exhibition, the event brought together a dozen or so dealers, and several philatelic associations and local institutions. Among them, the Musée postal du Forez, a postal museum located in the tower of the nearby medieval castle.

During the two days, the organization scheduled several postal history workshops, a conference of l'Académie de philatélie, and the annual meeting of l'Union Marcophile.

As in previous exhibitions since 2012, Phil@poste released a special vignette d'affranchissement for this philatelic event. The design is by Geneviève Marot, who since 2015 has designed many of the LISA issues.

		The watercolour depicts the medieval castle of Montrond-les-Bains. As in previous designs for the Marcophilex, the composition includes a facsimile of a local post office date stamp, showing the name change from Meylieu-Montrond to Montrond-les-Bains, in 1937. Phil@poste manufactured 15,000 thermal paper labels with this design. The image below shows a version of the design for this issue which was not used and which includes the bridge over the Loire River, enabling access to the city from the west.

The Montrond castle is named after the volcanic round hill dominating the surrounding plain. Although there is evidence of a small twelfth century fortification, the first castle was built in the fourteenth century. After more than a century of abandonment, it was saved by l'Association des Amis du Château, founded in 1969, who now manage and restore the site.

During the exhibition, La Poste set up a temporary post office which provided a special pictorial postmark, designed by Monica Novacka.

Visitors were able to buy the variable value stamps with the special design from the two IER LISA 2 XP postal kiosks installed next to the temporary office. Fortunately, as on previous occasions, the La Poste technician had selected the special program that temporarily suppresses the printing of the 2D Datamatrix code and the La Poste logo, usually printed on the right hand side of the stamp. During the exhibition it was only possible to purchase stamps with a face value at or above EUR 0.40, the current additional fee rate for domestic tracked mail or 'suivi'.

Inland economic mail - CC    ECOPLI	Inland priority mail (D+2) - DD    LETTRE VERTE
Inland priority mail (D+1) AA    LETTRE PRIORITAIRE	International priority mail IP    LETTRE PRIORITAIRE INTERNATIONALE

Both kiosks were connected to the postal network, enabling the printing of stamps with all available shipping types, some with its associated barcode tracking labels.
	Barcode label for international merchandise mail 'MARCHANDISES HORS UE'

Inland tracked 'Ecopli' mail - CC    ECOPLI + bar code label 'Sticker suivi'