1958. 🇹🇷 Turkish Cyprus Commemorates First Electric Car Built In Northern Cyprus.

 

  🇹🇷 The postal service of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus issued a pair of stamps on 7 October 2021 on the subject of the Günsel B9 automobile, the first electric car to be manufactured in Northern Cyprus. The issue was designed by GK Sonmezer and printed by Devlet Basimevi. An attractive and locally relevant issue released as part of a praiseworthily conservative new issue programme. Rating:- *****.

  Two more issues are planned for 2021:-

4 November - local old soft drinks

2 December - Anniversaries and events.

  🇲🇻 Depressingly it does seem that Stamperija still has its hands on the new stamp issue programme of the Maldives postal service. In the past twelve months or so we have seen trickling out in a piecemeal fashion various issues from numerous African postal services, nearly all clients of Stamperija, which look much more convincing as real postage stamps than the usual products egested by that Lithuanian philatelic agency. 

  The products have generally centred on two themes - the COVID-19 pandemic and International Day of Family Remittances (2020) - and products related to these subjects usually as variants  of the same design have appeared from most of the client postal administrations of Stamperija in the past 12 to 18 months. There was an initial feeling that these items did not originate from Stamperija but that is clearly incorrect since they have the names of Stamperija clients printed on them and the more that one looks at them the more one recognises the general tackiness of style and production for which Stamperija has become notorious. Of course there is also the extremely high face value of many of the items which offers the producer a good profit on the sale of each item - a stamp with a face value of £20 costs no more to produce than a stamp with a face value of £1 but produces a profit twenty times greater.

  Similar items to the latest products with the name of Maldives printed on them were announced for Mozambique one day before the Mozambique government was going to abolish the country’s postal service (see Blog 1888). We have not yet heard if Stamperija’s other Commonwealth client, Sierra Leone, will also be participating in this “joint issue” though just in Blog 1957 I expressed the hope that the postal services of both Maldives and Sierra Leone had ceased to be clients of the agency which certainly does not now seem to be the case with the former if not the latter.

For what it’s worth here are the latest products inscribed Maldives now on sale on an internet auction site:-

A. ?1921 - International Day of Family Remittances- 1 stamp issued in 2 different sheetlets of 8 with a centrally placed label and 2 single stamp miniature sheets each with a different logo in the right hand border. Rating:- 0.

B. 1921. Covid-19 

I. Postponement of Tokyo Olympic Games due to the pandemic - 2 se-tenant stamps issued in sheetlets of 8 and 1 single stamp miniature sheet. Rating:- 0.

II. Struggle against COVID-19 - 4 stamps issued in a se-tenant strip and 1 single stamp miniature sheet. Rating:- 0.

  III. Global COVID-19 Vaccination campaign - 1 single stamp miniature sheet. Rating:- 0.

IV. Tribute to Healthcare personnel - 1 stamp and 1 vertically se-tenant strip of 5 stamps from sheetlets of 10 and 1 single stamp miniature sheet. Rating:- 0. As always, caveat emptor.