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:- *****.
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)
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)
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)
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)
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
Very interesting observations, and a lot of effort - well done!
ReplyDeleteThank you.
DeleteIn 2035 many of the commonwealth entities will be on 0 stamps again.
ReplyDeleteThe end is near!!!
Thanks for the listing- and the comparison! however, in the 1950s stamps were used regularly for paying postage. in 2025, this is no longer the case; walk into any post office around the globe, and you will come across a computerised branch, using computer produced lables for the payment of postage. the dramatic decline in the usage of a postage stamp in the past decade, accelerated since Covid ought to be followed by the reduction in the number of new issues and quantities printed for each issue. Unfortunately countries such as Australia UK Channel Islands and philatelic agencies such as IGPC in NY's response seems to issue even more stamps to compensate for the reduction of sales of stamps. this is a sort of a vicious circle: collectors give up on collecting new issues, as costs rise, those stamps are almost never seen or used by the general public [Xmas issue aside]... so in summary, it is a bit difficult to compare older times when postage stamps were the primary mean to pay for postage, and a world where postage stamps role to prepay postage is in a steep decline.
ReplyDeleteWK replying - I agree. This was not so much an exercise in comparing the two eras as a look at what the collector may have had available to buy for his/her collection in those days when the Queen had just come to the throne and it really was a very different world including communications.
DeleteAlso in the 1950s many collectors didn't had the disposable income yet to spend on new issues. In the late 1950s this changed. Postal administrations and dealers saw a growing market. And the rest is history...
Delete