🇺🇸 The US philatelic agency, Philatelic Collector Inc, is up to its old tricks again and has released another round of tiresome and vastly expensive sets of 4 stamps with accompanying miniature sheets, one as usual containing the 4 stamps and the second containing 2 sets, on the subject of wildlife of the world. Featured species are not necessarily to be found in or in the seas around the territories whose names are printed on the stamps.
As usual it has managed to release philatelic products for 6 philatelic entities though the stamps are for just 2 postal services - those of Tonga and Cook Islands.
For Tonga and Niuafo’ou Tonga the issued stamps depict Butterflies of the World and come in 2 sets both containing 4 stamps and 2 miniature sheets as mentioned above.
For Cook Islands and Penrhyn Cook Islands the depicted subject is Whales and dolphins of the World while the subject depicted on the stamps of Aitutaki Cook Islands and Rarotonga Cook Islands is Butterflies of the World.
These stamps are similar to previous issues from these philatelic entities and there is no point in wasting time illustrating these latest emissions though I publish a couple of illustrations just to remind readers of the overall style of these products:-
And here’s the good news, for anyone wishing to buy one set of 4 and one each of the 2 miniature sheets for each of the 6 philatelic entities the total cost for the 2 Tongan entities will be T$1376.80 (£446.25p) while the total cost for the 4 Cook Islands entities will be a staggering NZ$1696.00 (£894.96p) if bought at face value. Hence for the one of everything completeist the total cost is £1341.21. Philatelic Collector does not really need to sell many sets before it’s making a very large profit.
I note that while Philatelic Collector Inc has been producing this material there has been no announcement that there is to be a philatelic commemoration of Tonga’s 50th anniversary of Independence.
Needless to say all the above are rated a big expensive 0. Who buys this stuff?
🇺🇬 The issue by Posta Uganda mentioned in the previous Blog which commemorates the Kabaka’s 65th Birthday appears to consist of just 2 stamps as illustrated below. The stamps were sold to the public from 17 December 2020. Rating:- ****.
🇲🇿 In Blogs 1762 and 1767 I mentioned a stamp and a miniature sheet issued by the postal service of Mozambique to commemorate International Day of Family Remittances. Whether or not this has been actually sold to the mail-sending public of Mozambique I know not. It’s worth noting that a similar issue has been produced for almost all the Stamperija client territories so make of that what you will. It now emerges that the issue is made up of 1 stamp (sold so far in sheetlets of 9) and 2 miniature sheets, the sheets varying because they have different emblems on them. For the moment I am very suspicious about their provenance and will hold off buying them.
I thought Tonga has always been independent within the Commonwealth?
ReplyDeleteIt was a Protected State with its own monarch until 1970.
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