Uganda Deluge.

A large New York-based stamp agency recently announced that it had produced a number of stamp issues for Uganda, mostly of tentative relevance in subject matter to the country whose name appeared on the stamps:- 15th death anniversary of Diana, Princess Of Wales (3 stamps and a miniature sheet), centenary of the sinking of The Titanic (6 stamps and 1 m.s.), US former President Abraham Lincoln (4 stamps and 1 m.s.), US musician Elvis Presley commemoration (4 stamps and 1 m.s.), 50th anniversary of the inauguration of former US President Kennedy (4 stamps and 1 m.s.), African orchids (4 stamps and 1 m.s.), African mushrooms (6 stamps and 1 m.s.), African endangered animals (5 stamps and 1 m.s.) and a commemoration of Jane Goodall who researches chimpanzees in Tanzania (8 stamps). I do not intend to add any of those "issues" to my collection. Now it seems that the Uganda Post Office has also given permission to "Stamperija", a Lithuania-based company to produce "stamps" with the name of Uganda printed on them. Stamperija has been producing such items for some time for a number of Portuguese- and French-speaking countries in Africa including Guinea, Togo, Central African Republic, St. Thomas And Prince Islands, Guinea-Bissau and notably the Commonwealth territory of Mozambique which consequently has had more than 1000 stamps issued per year in its name in the recent past. Now Uganda has joined that happy throng of African nations. The first "issue" was released on 30 March 2012 and consisted of 40 stamps and 10 miniature sheets on the subject of "Fauna of Africa". Ten sub-themes are included in the set, each being accorded 4 stamps and an accompanying miniature sheet. The subjects are Owls,

African elephants,

Butterflies, Birds of Prey, Endangered species, Freshwater fish, Kingfishers, Primates, Reptiles and Wild Cats. The price for the entire set comes to well above £100. Needless to say none of these "stamps" will be finding their way into my collection. Stanley Gibbons have not given catalogue recognition to any of the same sort of issues of Mozambique since 2004 apart from the 2010 WWF issue and accompanying miniature sheet depicting a large antelope.

Presumably this deluge of issues from Uganda (and doubtless there will be many more to come in the future) will suffer the same fate as regards catalogue status.