SingPost and The Straits Times unveil Singapore’s first locally produced lenticular stamps

Singapore Post and The Straits Times unveiled “Then & Now”, Singapore’s first collection of locally produced lenticular stamps, on 23 September 2026. The joint issue uses motion-like image changes to compare two familiar parts of the country's postal story across time: the Fullerton Building as the former General Post Office and as a present-day landmark, and a postal worker from an earlier period alongside a modern SingPost postman. The products are scheduled for release on World Post Day, 9 October, with a pre-order period running from 23 to 30 September.

Lenticular printing places different images beneath a ridged plastic lens so that the visible scene changes as the viewer tilts the object. SingPost describes the collection as the first lenticular stamp issue produced in Singapore. The technique gives the historical comparison a physical dimension: rather than placing an archival and contemporary photograph side by side, each stamp moves between the two views. The format makes the passage of time part of the collecting experience and connects changes in postal buildings, uniforms and working practices with the movement of the stamp itself.

One design focuses on the Fullerton Building. Completed in 1928, the waterfront structure housed the General Post Office and became one of the most recognisable centres of Singapore's communications network. Mail was sorted and handled within a building positioned close to the harbour, government offices and the commercial district. The lenticular treatment shifts from that postal past to the restored Fullerton Building of the present day, allowing a single collectable to show both the institution that once operated there and the landmark into which the building has evolved.

The second design turns from architecture to the people who carry the mail. An archival image of a postman is paired with a contemporary SingPost delivery employee, highlighting continuity in a service transformed by new vehicles, equipment, logistics systems and patterns of communication. Although the tools and visual identity of the job have changed, the central task remains recognisable: connecting households and businesses through physical delivery. The human comparison complements the Fullerton Building design by showing postal history as both institutional and personal.

The Straits Times supplied archival imagery for the project, drawing on its photographic record of Singapore's development. The collaboration brings together the national postal operator and a newspaper whose archives document the same urban and social changes represented on the stamps. This source material is important to the issue's character. The designs do not recreate the past through newly staged scenes; they place historic documentary photographs in direct visual conversation with contemporary views.

The principal presentation folder contains both $10 lenticular stamps and is priced at S$32.80. SingPost is also offering each $10 stamp individually at S$13.80. Related products expand the theme beyond the stamps themselves: postcards are priced at S$5, while a blank first-day cover and a souvenir cover are listed at S$0.60 each. A postcard and MyStamp set is priced at S$13.80, and a set of postage labels at S$6.20. These formats give collectors several ways to assemble the release, from the paired premium folder to postal stationery and first-day material.

World Post Day provides a deliberate date for the launch. Observed annually on 9 October, it marks the founding of the Universal Postal Union in 1874 and is used by postal administrations to draw attention to the role of mail and delivery networks. Releasing “Then & Now” on that date places Singapore's own postal development within a wider international commemoration. It also makes the issue relevant to collectors who build thematic groups around postal services, post offices, occupations, communications history and World Post Day.

The project is especially notable within Singapore