Tuesday, 29 April 2025

2711. 🇳🇦🇲🇹 Namibia’s Thrushes And Malta’s Europa Issue.

 New issues -

🇳🇦 Nam Post (postal service of Namibia) -

25 April 2024 - Thrusnes of Namibia - 4 stamps. Designed by Helge Denker & lithographed. Two illustrations are presently available. Rating:- *****.




🇲🇹 MaltaPost -

9 May 2025 - EUROPA, Archaeological discoveries - 2 stamps and 1 booklet containing 5 similar stamps. Designed by MaltaPost and lithographed by Printex and perforated 14. Rating:- ****.





Commonwealth countries and territories which are not yet known to have issued, or had issued on their behalf, any legitimate postage stamps during 2025 -

Anguilla

Antigua and Barbuda 

Australia Cocos (Keeling) Islands 

Bahamas 

Barbados 

Belize 

Botswana

British Antarctic Territory 

British Indian Ocean Territory 

British Virgin Islands 

Brunei Darussalam 

Cameroon 

Cayman Islands 

Cook Islands including Rarotonga 

Cook Islands Aitutaki 

Cook Islands Penrhyn 

Dominica 

Falkland Islands 

Gabon 

Ghana 

Grenada Carriacou and Petite Martinique 

Guyana 

Kenya

Kingdom of eSwatini 

Lesotho 

Malawi

Maldives 

Mauritius 

Mozambique 

Nauru 

Nevis 

New Zealand Ross Dependency

Nigeria 

Niue 

Papua New Guinea 

Pitcairn Islands 

Rwanda 

St Helena 

St Kitts or St Kitts Nevis

Saint Lucia 

St Vincent and The Grenadines 

Samoa 

Seychelles 

Solomon Islands 

South Africa 

The Gambia 

Tokelau 

Tonga

Tonga Niuafo’ou 

Trinidad and Tobago 

Turks And Caicos Islands

Tuvalu 

Uganda 

United Republic of Tanzania 

Vanuatu 

Zambia 

Therefore, at the end of April, 56 (63.6%) of Commonwealth philatelic entities appear not to have issued, or had issued on their behalf, any legitimate postage stamps during 2025. This compares with 67.4% at the end of March 2025 and 62.5% at the end of April 2024.

  There not being much else to report, I wondered if the present pattern of stamp issuing whereby the postal services of many Commonwealth countries are now failing to issue any or, perhaps, just a handful of stamps in any given year while a handful of territories release vast amounts of expensive stamp issues, was beginning to revert to the new issue stamp policies of before around 1960 when IGPC was beginning to power the new issue market by releasing numerous stamps for Ghana and then the Maldive Islands and then others such as Nigeria and Grenada and Dominica. I thought  it might be interesting to see what was happening, say, 70 years ago when Queen Elizabeth had succeeded to the throne just three years before, Churchill was prime minister and the Cold War was heating up. Small boys were exchanging stamps from packets and Commonwealth post offices were dealing with the effects on the designs of their postage stamps by the change of monarch, in particular the need to produce stamps with the Queen’s portrait shown on them instead of that of King George VI. 

  I used the very first Stanley Gibbons Catalogue I ever bought (the 1967 edition of Part 1 - ‘British Commonwealth’) to trawl through all the Commonwealth countries featured in the catalogue which existed in 1955 and discovered that there were then 88 Commonwealth stamp-issuing entities in 1955 and during the whole of that year only 38 of them (43.2%) issued new stamps. The grand total of stamps issued by the entirety of those entities that year was only 208.

  It’s true to say that  many of the territories had spent the previous year issuing new definitive sets featuring Queen Elizabeth and really had no immediate need for further issues during 1955. But we must note that most of the 1955 issues were definitives and the release of commemorative stamps was somewhat unusual. Perhaps we are now returning to that situation where stamp issues are irregular and rarely released unless they are needed for real practical reasons though of course certain entities such as Royal Mail, the postal services of the offshore islands and Stamperija continue to buck the trend by issuing vast numbers of stamps which will never be used for ordinary postal uses as though they recognise the end is in sight and they are trying to cash in while the golden goose gasps its last breaths. 


Number of Commonwealth stamps issued in 1955 by each entity -

 Aden 0

Aden Kathiri State of Seiyun 0

Aden Qu’ait State In Hadhramaut 12 (definitives)


Antigua 0

Ascension 0

Australia 9

Bahamas 0

Bahrain 3 (definitive surcharges)

Barbados 0

Basutoland 0

Bechuanaland 11 (definitives)

Bermuda 0

British Guiana 0

British Honduras 0

British Solomon Islands Protectorate 0

Brunei 0

Canada 8


Cayman Islands 0

Ceylon 1

Cook Islands 0

Cyprus 15 (definitives)


Dominica 0

Falkland Islands 1 (definitive)

Falkland Islands Dependencies 0

Fiji 0

Gambia 0

Gibraltar 0

Gilbert And Ellice Islands 0

Gold Coast 0

Great Britain 17 (definitives)

Grenada 4 (definitives)

Hong Kong 0

India 18 (definitives on the Five Year Plan)


Jamaica 0

Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika 0

Kuwait 3 (definitives surcharges)


Leeward Islands 0

Malaya Johore 2 (1 definitive and 1 commemorative)


Malaya Kedah 1 (definitive)

Malaya Kelantan 1 (definitive)

Malaya Malacca 10 (definitives)

Malaya Negri Sembilan 1 (definitive)

Malaya Pahang 5 (definitives)

Malaya Penang 5 (definitives)

Malaya Perak 1 (definitive)



Malaya Perlis 1 (definitive)

Malaya Selangor 1 (definitive)

Malaya Trengganu 1 (definitive)

Maldive Islands 0 

Malta  0

Mauritius 0

Montserrat 10 (definitives)


Morocco Agencies Pounds sterling 1 (definitive surcharge)

Morocco Agencies Spanish currency 1 (definitive surcharge)

Muscat 1 (definitive surcharge)

Nauru 0

New Hebrides 0

New Zealand 6 (3 commemoratives and 3 ‘Health’ charity stamps)

Nigeria 0

Niue 0

Norfolk Island 0

North Borneo 4 (definitives)


Pakistan 10


Papua And New Guinea 0 

Pitcairn Islands 0

Rhodesia And Nyasaland 2

St Christopher, Nevis And Anguilla 0

St Helena 0

St Lucia 0

St Vincent 12 (definitives)


Sarawak 1 (definitive)

Seychelles 0

Sierra Leone 0

Singapore 15 (definitives)

Somaliland Protectorate 0

South Africa 3

South West Africa 0

Sudan 0

Swaziland 0

Tangier International Zone 3 (definitive surcharges)


Tokelau Islands 0

Tonga 0

Trinidad And Tobago 2 (definitives on surcharges- perforation varieties) 

Tristan Da Cunha 0

Turks And Caicos Islands 2 (definitives)

Virgin Islands 0

Western Samoa 4


Zanzibar 0


2710. 🇨🇦 Canada Post Foundation 2025 Stamp.

 

New issues -

🇨🇦 Canada Post -

28 April 2025 - Canada Post Community Foundation - 1 self-adhesive stamp from booklets of 10 costing $13.40c. Designed by Paprika from art by Anne-Julie Dudemaine and lithographed by Colour Innovations. Rating:-**.







Australia Post -

22 April 2025 - Disney’s ‘Princess Cinderella’ - Stamp pack containing a pane of 9 different My Stamps plus a pane of 12 valueless labels. Sold for $17 (total face value $13.50). This product is freely available from the Australia Post internet site and can be used to prepay postage and therefore, though sold at a premium, the stamps included in it should be considered to be an Australia Post new issue. Rating:- 0.






Friday, 25 April 2025

2709. 🇲🇹 Malta Commemorates Pope Francis. 🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦

 

New issues -

🇲🇹 MaltaPost -

26 April 2025 - Commemoration of the late Pope Francis, former Head of the Roman Catholic Church - 1 x €1.50 stamp. Designed by MaltaPost and lithographed by Printex and perforated 14. Rating:- *****.


9 May 2024 - EUROPA, Archaeological discoveries - 2 stamps (€1.91 and €2). Further details and illustrations awaited.

🇬🇮 Royal Gibraltar Post Office -

8 May 2025 - EUROPA, Archaeological discoveries - 2 stamps (£1.96 and £3.16) and 1 miniature sheet containing both stamps. Designed by Stephen Perera from artwork by Jonathan Pointer and lithographed by Cartor. Rating:- ***.




🇲🇲 Myanmar Post -

29 April 2025 - ‘Twelve seasonal festivals and flowers’ of Myanmar - 1 sheetlet of 12 different stamps which were issued originally in 2019 but are now combined for the first time as a single unit. Rating:- ****.





🇴🇲 Oman Post -

22 April 2025 - Joint issue with Russia, 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Oman and Russia. It was announced during the State visit of Sultan Haitham bin Tarik to Russia that the two countries’ postal services would release a joint stamp issue to commemorate their friendship. The report in Muscat Daily explains the issue but I have not yet seen an illustration of the stamp itself.





Thursday, 24 April 2025

2708. 🇬🇧 Royal Mail To Commemorate End Of Second World War Anniversary.

 


New issues -

🇬🇧 Royal Mail -

1 May 2025 - ‘Valour and victory - stories of the Second World War’, 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe - 10 stamps (2 strips of 5 - 5 x 2nd Class and 5 x 1st) (total face value £17), 1 miniature sheet containing 4 different stamps featuring Vera Lynn, ‘The Forces Sweetheart’) sold for £6.80, 1 Prestige booklet containing 4 panes (pane 4 being made up of King Charles III definitives - 1 x 20p, 2 x 50p and 2 x £1, code M25LMPIL) and sold for £28.65, 1 Collectors sheet containing 1 of each stamp with attached labels and sold for £18.20 and 1 set of 10 ‘gold stamps’ sold in a presentation box for £149.99. Designed by Supple Studio and lithographed by Cartor and perforated 14 x 14.5.

Rating:- *.
















 








7 May 2025 - EuroPhilEx stamp exhibition, Birmingham.

1 miniature sheet containing 4 different stamps (this is the above Vera Lynn miniature sheet with additional inscriptions). (‘Limited edition’ of  7500’). Designed by Together Design London Ltd and lithographed by Cartor and perforated 14.5 x 14. Sold for ££6.80p.

1 ‘Collectors sheet containing 10 x ‘Union Flag’ stamps with attached labels (see Blog 2702) sold for £18.20  (‘Limited edition’ of 5000’). Rating:- ***.