2543.🇱🇨🇩🇲🇬🇩 Caribbean Gold May Bring New Stamps.

 

🇱🇨🇩🇲🇬🇩 While Australia Post is busy issuing stamps commemorating all the Australian women who have won gold medals at the Paris Olympic Games (there are one or two Australian men who have won gold but they’re a little thin on the ground at present) we might just speculate about two possible future new issues from Commonwealth countries which have become rather stamp-shy in recent years - Saint Lucia and Dominica. 

  Both of the Caribbean countries have had one of their athletes win the country’s first ever Olympic gold medal. In the case of Saint Lucia, Julien Alfred won the Women’s 100 metre race and for Dominica, Thea LaFond took the Women’s Triple Jump Olympic title. 

  The postal administration of Saint Lucia is known to have last issued a postage stamp on 22 February 2019 and the postal service of Dominica most recently released a postage stamp on 18 November 2020 (items issued the following year were personalised stamp sheets produced by a philatelic ‘agency’ and almost certainly had nothing to do with the Dominica postal service) and so therefore the philatelic celebration of their respective gold medalists would be an apt way for the two nations to celebrate these great sporting feats by the two distinguished local athletes.

These are worthy possible modern commemoratives to look out for.

  When I was reading about these Caribbean successes I was reminded about the Grenada Olympic gold medal success back in 2012 when the local athlete Kirani James won the 100 metres final. The Grenadan government announced that a commemorative stamp issue would be released to honour Kirani James’s success but when I visited Grenada on 29 November 2012 I found that while supplies of the stamps had arrived in the island, permission had not then been given for them to be issued. Subsequently, though I remained vigilant, I never did see an announcement about the stamps having been released and I never saw them being offered for sale by any dealers.

  The issue was made up of two miniature sheets - one containing three different stamps and the other of a single stamp.

  In preparing this piece I googled the issue and to my surprise I found both miniature sheets being offered for sale on E Bay by Imperial Mint which, it appears, is linked to Intergovernmental Philatelic Corporation (IGPC) and which, when you look at its internet site, has thousands of IGPC products for sale going back many years. Presumably these Grenadan stamps are from IGPC stock which have been there since the issue was first prepared and the sale of these stamps does not imply that they were ever actually issued in Grenada.  They may have status of Prepared for issue but not released. Perhaps someone will know the answer. Regardless, they’re interesting and reasonably priced and therefore worth adding, I think, to a collection of Grenada or Olympics stamps.

🇦🇺 Australia Post -

announced on 5 August 2023 - Australian gold medal winners at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris - stamps issued in sheetlets of 10 and designed by Jo Muré and lithographed by RA Print and perforated 13. Rating:- ***.

BMX Cycling, Women’s BMX racing - Saya Sakakibara - 1 stamp -

Tennis, Men’s Doubles - Matthew Ebden and John Peers - 1 stamp -

Swimming, Women’s 200 metre backstroke - Kaylee McKeown - 1 stamp -

Swimming, Men’s 50 metre freestyle - Cameron McEvoy - 1 stamp -