🇵🇰 Pakistan Post issued a single stamp on 14 August 2019 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the founding of Commonwealth. The stamp was designed by Muhammad Jawad Ajmal and Enzo Pitaro, Hugh Gulland and Alison Arnold of the Commonwealth Secretariat and lithographed by National Security Printing Company Of Karachi. Rating:- *****.
The Commonwealth came into existence by the signing of the London Declaration on 26 April 1949. The 8 original members were United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Pakistan was represented at the signing by its first prime minister, Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan.
I have not come across any news to suggest that any other countries are planning to release stamps to commemorate this notable anniversary.
🇯🇪 Jersey Post will quite rightly release a set of stamps on 1 October 2019 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the island’s independent postal service. This interesting set of 8 stamps will be printed in lithography with additional gold foil. Rating:- *****.
🇵🇬 It’s sad that the postal service of Papua New Guinea has had this awful issue foisted on it by the US-based philatelic agency, IGPC, presumably to try to extract money from collectors in China. The issue is made up of 40 stamps sold in 8 se-tenant pairs of 5 different stamps and the featured subject is ‘Chinese traditional art - facial make-up’ which clearly has the greatest relevance to Papua New Guinea or not as the case may be. Rating:- 0
Do you know the face values on the PNG stamps? It looks like they are 4T, 8T, 10T, 20T, 60T and 70T (on some the T is obvious, but not on others). Oddly, PNG removed the 1T and 2T coins from circulation in 2006. Of course you could still buy a 4T stamp, but you'll pay 5T for it. Clearly, there is no postal need for the 4T and 8T stamps. The 10T, 20T stamps may be useful as make up stamps, though I suspect the low face values is more to make this issue inexpensive for Chinese collectors.
ReplyDeleteThe upper case T is a worry - takes me back to the aborted Stage 2 Bird of Paradise stamps of 1992.Kina is upper case, toea is lower case.
DeleteBlimey, that's the first time I've seen Vietnamese spam. All mine seem to be for crypto-currencies lately.
ReplyDeleteHello Chris, I only know what can be seen in the illustrations, I’m afraid.
ReplyDeleteWK.
Hello Ian. I have had Vietnamese before though I usually delete it as I have no idea what it says. However as you humourously draw attention to it I’ll leave it so that others can see what you’re referring to. I only hope it’s not rude. Interestingly, I don’t think I’ve had crytocurrency spam before but trekking in Nepal seems to be a firm favourite.
ReplyDeleteWK.
Strangely, my enquiry to IGPC met with the response that they did NOT produce those stamps, nor do they sell them. Proof of purchase should solve that anomaly.
ReplyDeleteHello Doug. Thank you. That’s interesting. The stamps are very credible given what has appeared in the past from IGPC on behalf of Grenada in particular. But they could be bogus. It’s difficult to know what’s happening with PNG at the moment as it has been showing a number of new issues on its website at the moment which have not yet appeared on the market and there are parallel products appearing from IGPC on popular thematic subjects though they have an appeal to the US market rather than that of China. As you indicate time will no doubt clarify the status of these Chinese subjects stamps. Certainly I do not intend to add them to my PNG collection as their subject matter is clearly irrelevant to the country. One worthwhile point is that the Chinese make-up ‘stamps’ seem like a remarkably complicated product for a bogus issue.
DeleteBest wishes, WK.