2426. 🇪🇷 Intriguing Stamp From Eritrea.

New issues.

🇮🇳 India Post -

24 December 2023 - Commemoration of Acharya Sushil Kumar Ji Maharaj (1926-1994), Jainist monk - 1 stamp. Rating,-  **.

🇵🇰 Pakistan Post -

25 December 2023 - 147th birth anniversary of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, first prime minister of Pakistan - 1 stamp - Rs10 definitive surcharged and overprinted. Rating:- **.

🇦🇪 Emirates Post (postal service of the United Arab Emirates) -

25 December 2023 - Al Wathba Fossil Dunes Protected Area, Abu Dhabi - 1 miniature sheet containing a single stamp. Lithographed. Rating:- ***.

🇪🇷 Eritrea postal service - 

2022 - Revenue stamp overprinted for use as postage stamp - 1 stamp. This item is reported on Stamp Boards by the editor of Colnect, Gene (as DJCMH) in the form of a query about it. DJCMH has had a picture of the item presented to him by way of a question as to whether anyone knew anything about the product which the questioner thought had been issued in 2022 in the form of a previously issued Revenue stamp depicting the state emblem of Eritrea with a hand-applied overprint in black which reads “POSTAGE” diagonally from lower left to upper right.

  This appears to be the stamp that is illustrated in an internet article on a site titled A Year of Reading the World. The article, by Tesfaye Gebreab, is titled Book of the Month and was published on 30 November 2022. In the article, Gebreab (as illustrated below) described receiving a package from Eritrea which was accompanied by a postcard “bearing an Eritrean stamp”, the very same overprinted Revenue stamp.

  The State of Eritrea is ruled by a monster, Isaias Afwerki, who has enslaved his people or, alternatively, has ruled in such a way as to cause tens of thousands of the country’s young people to flee into exile which has contributed significantly to Europe’s mass immigration problems. Eritrea has become a pariah state, an ally of Putin’s Russia, and, from the philatelic point of view, is not known to have issued any stamps since 2016 (see Blog 783).

  Here then, we have the documented use of this somewhat primitive revenue stamp, overprinted, as a postage stamp in 2022. Therefore there seems to be no doubt that this stamp was issued to the sender of this piece of mail with the intention of it being used as a postage stamp. However, the overprint appears to have been applied by hand and so the question is raised as to whether this was an overprint applied at a local post office or as a national issue. The problem here is that, according to internet currency calculators, the Eritrean Nakfa is equivalent to only 5p sterling which is hardly enough to cover the cost of conveying even a postcard.

  It seems to me that a local post office was making the best of the stamps, be they revenue or postage, they had available but no doubt someone out there will know more about this intriguing item and reveal it as time passes. There’s little doubt that collecting the stamps of many African countries is a great challenge but fascinatingly rewarding.