955. Malta George Cross, Guernsey Cruise Ships And Namibia Rabbits.

  🇲🇹 Malta Post issued one of its greeting stamps depicting a map of Malta with an attached label which commemorated the 75th anniversary of the award of the George Cross to the island on 15 April 2017. Rating:- ***.

  A similar such item will be issued on 11 May 2017 to commemorate Malta Post's participation in the Essen 2017 stamp fair.

  🇳🇦 Nam Post, the postal service of Namibia, issued a pair of stamps on the subject of local hares and rabbits on 15 April 2017. The delightful designs are by Helge Denker. Rating:- *****.

  🇬🇬 The first of the Guernsey Post visiting cruise ship Post and Go stamps have now been issued and are being offered for sale on an internet auction site. Some of these ships are enormous and the thought of what would happen if the passengers from some of these behemoths all suddenly descended on Smith Street post office wanting to dispense their souvenirs from kiosk GG01 is truly mind-boggling. The first 2 ships are:-

   21 April 2017 - Caribbean Princess (Princess Cruises):-

   22 April 2017 - Azura (P & O Cruises):-

  The next cruise ship to visit Guernsey will be Le Soleal on 26 April and after that will be Caribbean Princess again on 2 May. That will give us chance to see for the first time how Guernsey Post deals with a ship's return visit.

  🇼🇸 A commentator on Stamp Boards has indicated that an informed source has revealed that Samoa Post has suspended the issue of any more stamps on its behalf by Philatelic Collector Inc. Princestamps states that the Samoan postal service took the action because PCI was not "issuing many suitable supplies, a lack of supplies locally and a high number of expensive and irrelevant issues that were drawing the Samoa name into disrepute".

  Interestingly, if one visits the Samoa Post website and enters the Philately Services section a list of pre-Philatelic Collector issues is shown and some of them are shown on a stock list - no PCI issues are mentioned on the site.

  Meanwhile, in the same thread on the subject of the need or otherwise for very high face value stamps, the expert Steven Zirinsky delivered what sounded like less positive news. He wrote, "I think you will soon see values from various countries that make this $90 value (from the previously reported issue by British Virgin Islands) pale in comparison. In fact, I know it. And they will be real. And they will be used primarily on large Parcel Mail because the meter machine broke down and no one bothers to fix them any more. But maybe I have said too much" 

  He then goes on to advise readers to "watch my newsletter or Linn's or Stanley Gibbons for an article by me in about a month's time".

  This seems like a very gloomy prophesy by Steven Zirinsky and we await the bombshell when it is dropped. It is interesting that the Stanley Gibbons Catalogue editor has recently been commenting on his approach to very high face value stamps and I guess we must now put it in the context of the article which Steven Zirinsky tells us is soon to be published in Stanley Gibbons Monthly. Presumably when he wrote about his ideas about listing very high face value stamps the editor was aware of what Steven Zirinsky had written in his article which he has foreshadowed in Stamp Boards and the editor is clearly thinking of how to deal with, as Zirinsky has written, "values ... that make this $90 pale in comparison".

  🇮🇳 India Post released at last its miniature sheet on the subject of Coffee on 23 April 2017. It is said to have a faint aroma of coffee attached to it. Rating:- ***.