Problematical new issues 1

Two territories which always pose problems whenever they issue new stamps are Cameroun and Mozambique. Cameroun has recently announced one of its very infrequent and usually almost unobtainable new issues which was planned to have been released on 10 May 2010 and which celebrated The Africa Conference, "Africa 21", which was being held in the capital city of Yaounde. The issue comprised of two stamps, values FCFA 125 and FCFA 250, and are said to depict the conference logo, the lower value in black and white and the higher in colour. As Cameroun's football team is also appearing in the World Cup competition in South Africa (but not getting off to a good start after a 1-0 defeat in their first game against Japan), given a number of previous issues have been released to commemorate previous World Cup participation by the Cameroun team, we might also expect to find the Post Office, CamPost, issuing a further set to mark this latest World Cup involvement of the country. No doubt it will be even more difficult to track down and be much sought after by football philatelists and most likely will turn up after some months at the very least, if not years, on E Bay fetching well over $100 for a set and the same again for any associated miniature sheet. We will see.

  Meanwhile, Mozambique has announced its most recent new issue - a set of 3 stamps released on 14 April 2010, all in the same stylised design, marking the 30th anniversary of LAM - the Linhas Aerias de Mocambique - the national airline. Mozambique new issues are usually difficult to track down but are mostly not in the same league of difficulty as those of Cameroun and I often find I can obtain them from the New York dealers, Herricks, a few weeks after the date of issue. In these new issues I do not include the long thematic sets which the Mozambique Post Office officially acknowledges as "issued abroad" which is a bizarre concept that implies that they are not produced for use on mail within Mozambique but as collectibles with postal validity which, no doubt, if you troubled yourself to take to Mozambique with you, you could actually post a letter with one affixed and it would be carried through the mail. Such a series was "The History of Transport", said to have been issued on 30 September 2009, and consisting of an expensive 162 stamps and 27 miniature sheets. I long ago decided that such items would not receive a place in my Commonwealth collection. But a collection of the new issues actually produced for use on real mail in the country makes a fascinating collection and adds a note of exoticism with their inscriptions being entirely in Portuguese rather than English as well as their primitive production and naive designs. Sometimes the most interesting stamps are the ones you have to work hardest to obtain.