The Bucharest 2nd International Postal Services Association held in September 2004, hosted as a special event the issueing of a three postage stamps set by Romfilatelia.
      For the first time in history this set was displayed in a generously designed album, 30,5 x 38,5 cm, also including two silver medals, O 37 mm, engraved with the same subjects of the stamps and a folder with six original etchings, on which the final stamps designs were based, signed and numbered by the autor. This is unique in philately history.
      The three stamps, the medals and the prints are works of the renown Romanian artist Octavian Ion Penda.
      The main theme is The 23rd Congress of The Universal Postal Services Union which took place in the year 2004 in Bucharest. This is why the central stamp has a picture of the monument of the Universal Postal Services Union, an artwork of the French sculptor Rene de St-Marceau, revealed for the first time in Bern in 1874, 131 years ago.
      The other two stamps commemorate the events connected to the activities of the famous cartographers of the world Mercator and Hondius and the great navigator Amerigo Vespucci.
      The first stamp shows Mercator and Hondius at work. The background contains The Great Map of Europe created by Mercator 451 years ago in 1554 and Hondius who used Mercator’s engraved plates to create the famous Hondius-Mercator Atlas 400 years ago in 1604.