Holograms On New Nigerian Stamps & £261 Paid For South Sudan Set.

In 2010 Nigeria issued nine stamps, including redrawn definitive values, with small holograms applied to them, presumably as security devices. I am not aware of any publicity put out by The Nigerian Post Office regarding this issue nor have I seen any dealers yet offering them for sale. The addition of a hologram is rather surprising since it would seem to be quite a sophisticated device to be included on Nigerian stamps as their appearance is usually rather primitive in nature and the printing by Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Limited who have printed most Nigerian stamps since 1968, often results in a poor quality finished product. Most of the nine stamps bear the inscription "2000 YEARS OF NIGERIAN (some say "NIG") ART". The nine values are:- N20, N30, 4xN50, N90, N100 and N120. The holograms appear to be in two formats - either round or rectangular. It is perhaps not too surprising that these stamps have not come on to the market yet since it often takes many months for new Nigerian issues to be available to dealers - I have not yet seen a stamp dealer's advertisement offering the 2009 "road safety" single stamp issue for sale. I have no doubt that these stamps will come along eventually and those who wish to buy them need only to be patient.

Meanwhile, on the subject of patience, only the second complete set of three of the first issue of stamps by South Sudan to be offered on E Bay was sold today and someone was so desperate to get them that they paid an astonishing US$415.10 (£267) to buy them. We must remember that 100,000 of each value of this set was printed and therefore there must surely be enough of the stamps around to meet everyone's collecting needs. However I do note that quite a number of the stamps have now been put up for sale on the internet and usually the offer is just for two of the values (the flag and president stamps). For some reason most sellers can not get hold of the coat of arms stamp to include it in the sale. It may be that that particular value has been set aside by the South Sudan Post Office for use on ordinary mail and in consequence not been put forward for philatelic sale. It is also worth noting that the seller of the second complete set sold on E Bay was based in China where the stamps were printed and there may be an availability there as a result. I still suspect that complete sets of these stamps will eventually come on to the market at reasonable prices. It's all a matter of being patient.