369. More Local Aviator Stamps From Guyana.

  Despite the constant outpouring of philatelic products from Guyana's foreign philatelic agents, most of which have no relevance in subject matter to Guyana, some of the country's new issues remain rather interesting to collect as I suggested in the Blog 368. In Blog 290 I described an issue of strict local interest which depicted Guyanese women aviators. A second such issue has now appeared which features another Guyanese female aviator - Captain Debra Gouveia - which this time is produced in miniature sheet format (see above illustration). This is a wonderful local issue and it is certainly getting genuine local postal usage (I have seen the $80 value in the upper left corner of the sheet used on commercial cover). The 2 values ($80 and $150) represent the new domestic mail and Americas mail rates introduced in November 2013.

  Meanwhile the same agency which produces philatelic items with Guyana's name printed on them continues to flood the market with numerous issues on behalf of other territories and as usual, hardly any of them feature subjects which have any relevance to the philatelic entities which allow them to produce these items on their behalf. As usual, I feel no need to buy any of the following and call them "Footnote Issues". Hopefully the editor of Stanley Gibbons Catalogues will consign them to the Appendix section as he has done recently with a number of Tuvalu issues released from 2010 onwards:-

  Grenada - 

20 January 2014 - Animals of China - 1 sheetlet of 4 different stamps and 1 miniature sheet:-

  The depiction of the tiger is presumably a representation of the South China or Amoy Tiger but is rather unfortunate since the creature had been hunted to extinction in China although it is thought by some that a few individual tigers of this subspecies may still exist in the wild.

  Grenada Grenadines -

20 January 2014 - Chinese Fine Art - 1 sheetlet of 4 differents stamps and 1 m.s.:-

14 January 2014 - 60th anniversary of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II - 1 sheetlet of 4 different stamps and 1 m.s. (this is the only issue in this entire list which can be considered to be directly relevant to this philatelic entity since it commemorates a significant anniversary of the Head of State of Grenada):-

14 January 2014 - Commemoration of the 100th Tour de France (cycling race held in France - a very long way from Grenada!) - 1 sheetlet of 4 different stamps and 1 m.s.-

20 January 2014 - 10th anniversary of the final flight of the Concorde - 1 sheetlet of 4 different stamps and 1 m.s.:-

20 January 2014 - Exotic purebreed cats - 2 sheetlets each of 4 different stamps (total of 8 stamps) and 2 m.s. (1 sheetlet and 1 m.s. have been illustrated in a previous Blog):-

20 January 2014 - Sea Turtles of the Caribbean Sea ( not necessarily species found in local waters) - 1 sheetlet of 3 different stamps and 1 m.s.:-

20 January 2014 - Art by Michelangelo (Italian artist) - 1 sheetlet of 4 different stamps and 1 m.s.:-

  Guyana - 

2014 - Commemoration of US President Obama - 1 sheetlet of 4 identical stamps and 2 m.s.:-

2 December 2013 - Commemoration of Elvis Presley (US music performer) - 1 sheetlet of 4 different stamps:-

  St. Vincent And The Grenadines - 

2014 - Christening of Prince George of Cambridge -1 sheetlet of 4 different stamps (the design takes the form of a mosaic of pictures of the christening):-

  2014 - Commemoration of US President Obama - 1 sheetlet of 4 identical stamps and 2 m.s.:-

2014 - "Elvis Presley in Canada"- 1 sheetlet of 4 different stamps:-

  On the subject of Canada we return to real stamps and note 2 new definitives with a 63c face value which were issued presumably to replace stamps of the same design which were denominated in the "P" value and which were precipitously withdrawn in November 2013 because of impending postal rate increases. These new stamps are self-adhesive and the mammal design is a coil stamp while the design depicting Queen Elizabeth II is from booklets of 10. The period of their sale must have been extremely short since the standard letter rate in Canada rose to 65c on 13 January 2014 necessitating the release of 65c definitives:-

  A sheetlet of greetings stamps with attached labels was issued by Malaysia in late 2013 where the total face value of the stamps was RM4 but the sale price was RM10. The profits from the sale of the sheetlet were donated to the Typhoon Haiyan Disaster Fund to help the victims of the catastrophe:-

The fifth issue of "Heartwarming" stamps was released by Hong Kong China" on 23 January 2014. The set of 6 was designed by Jason Chum and lithographed by Cartor :-

  In Mauritius, where the country's new stamp issue programme is clearly taken a lot more seriously than in some countries, the country's cabinet has announced that there will be 3 new issues during 2014:-

   Fauna and Flora - 3 stamps (depicting a bat - La Rousette de Rodrigues, a dragon fly and the Pignon D'Inde);

  Anniversaries and Events - 4 stamps (Bicentenary of the arrival of Rev. Jean Lebrun in Mauritius; 25th anniversary of the first use of mobile phone in Mauritius; 10th anniversary of the creation of the Omsbudsman For Children's Office; 150th anniversary of the death of Pere Laval); 

  Emblematic animal of the Indian Ocean - the Green Turtle.

  As usual with Mauritius this is an interesting, conservative and locally relevant programme for 2014 so let us hope that the stamp designers and Mauritius Stamp Design Committee manage to provide us with some interesting and exciting designs which has not always been the case in previous years. I do not know any proposed dates of issue yet.