2540. 🇮🇲 Isle Of Man Bee Stamps.

 

New issues -

🇦🇺 Australia Post -

announced 31 July 2024 - Australian gold medal winners at the Olympic Games in Paris. All issued in sheetlets of 10 and designed by Jo Muré and lithographed by RA Print and perforated 13. Rating:- ***.

Stamp no. 5 - Mollie O’Callaghan, Swimming women’s 200 metre freestyle - 1 stamp - 

Stamp no. 6 - Kayley McKeown, Swimming women’s 100 metres backstroke - 1 stamp -

🇮🇲 Isle Of Man Post Office -

12 April 2024 - 150th anniversary of the British Beekeepers Association, ‘Life of bees’ - 6 stamps and 1 self-adhesive miniature sheet.

In Blog 2534 I mentioned the new sheetlet which Isle Of Man Post Office issued on 23 July 2024 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Peel Engineering and noted the inclusion of a couple of stamps in the sheetlet which in publicity are described as postage paid labels and which do not have the royal cypher nor royal cameo printed on them. I commented that these appeared to be the first IOM postage stamps not to bear a symbol of royal approval on them but a comment posted at the end of the Blog by an anonymous commentator (to whom thanks) pointed out that the Bees set issued on 12 April 2024 had also included stamps without the royal cypher/cameo. The basic set of 6 gummed stamps do not have the royal cypher printed on them which was in error. However, the 12 stamp self-adhesive miniature sheet which is being sold for £20 includes 10 stamps from the basic set (2 x 4 and 1 each of the other 2) plus 2 other stamps with the inscription’Postage Paid’ in the spot where the royal cypher should be sited.

Hence we have 12 different stamps - the basic set of 6 (gummed) without royal cypher and the stamps from the miniature sheet (all self-adhesive) - the 6 basic stamps (with royal cypher) and the 2 ‘Postage Paid’ stamps without royal cypher.

Countries and territories which are not yet known to have issued, or had issued on their behalf, any legitimate postage stamps this year up until the end of July.

Aitutaki Cook Islands 

Anguilla 

Antigua and Barbuda 

Bahamas 

Belize 

British Antarctic Territory 

British Indian Ocean Territory 

British Virgin Islands 

Cameroon 

Cayman Islands 

Cook Islands including Rarotonga 

Dominica 

Gabon 

Grenada 

Grenada Carriacou and Petite Martinique 

Jamaica 

Kenya 

Kingdom of eSwatini 

Kiribati 

Lesotho 

Maldives 

Montserrat 

Nauru 

Nigeria 

Niuafo’ou Tonga

Niue

Penrhyn Cook Islands 

Pitcairn Islands 

Ross Dependency 

Rwanda 

St Helena 

Saint Lucia 

Samoa

Solomon Islands 

The Gambia 

Tokelau 

Tonga

Trinidad and Tobago 

Tuvalu 

Uganda 

United Republic of Tanzania 

Vanuatu 

Zambia 

Therefore, by the end of July, 43 out of 88 (48.9%) of Commonwealth philatelic entities are not yet known to have issued, or had issued on their behalf, any legitimate postage stamps in 2024. This compares with the figure of 45 (51.1%) at the end of June 2024 and the figure of 33 (35.7%) at the end of July 2023.