2924. 🇫🇯 A Flood Of Fiji Surcharges.

New issues -

  The stamp dealer, Prince Stamps, based in Spain, is offering a large number of new surcharges fron Fiji Post which are stated to have been released in 2026. I believe these were being sold at the Fiji stand at the Boston International Stamp Exhibition just finishing. There were also some commemorative issues for sale -

23 May 2026 - Fiji traditions - 4 stamps. Lithographed. Rating:- *****.

23 May 2026 - Boston International Philatelic Exhibition, Fiji’s natural heritage - 1 miniature sheet containing 4 different stamps. Lithographed. Rating:- ***.

19 May 2026 - 147th Girmit Era (see Blog 2918). The designs of this set have been pre iously shown in tbis blog but a number appear to have been printed with name of the country omitted from the stamp design. Rating:- *****.

2026 - Various surcharges totalling 43 different stamps as illustrated below. Rating:- ****

Commonwealth countries and territories which are not know to have issued, or had issued on their behalf, any legitimate postage stamps during 2026 up until the end of May.

Anguilla 

Antigua and Barbuda

Australia (Cocos (Keeling) Islands)

Australia Norfolk Island 

Australian Antarctic Territory 

Barbados 

Belize

British Antarctic Territory 

British Indian Ocean Territory 

British Virgin Islands 

Cameroon 

Cook Islands including Rarotonga 

Cook Islands Aitutaki 

Cook Islands Penrhyn 

Dominica

Gabon 

Grenada 

Grenada Carriacou and Petite Martinique 

Guyana 

Jamaica

Kenya

Kingdom of eSwatini

Kiribati

Lesotho 

Malawi 

Maldives 

Montserrat 

Mozambique 

Nevis

New Zealand Ross Dependency 

Niue

Papua New Guinea

Pitcairn Islands 

Rwanda

St Helena

St Kitts/St Kitts Nevis

Saint Lucia 

St Vincent and the Grenadines 

Samoa

Seychelles 

Solomon Islands

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 May, 51 out of 88 ( 57.95%) of Commonwealth philatelic entities had not issued, or had not had issued on their behalf, any legitimate postage stamps in 2026.This compares with 59.1% at the end of April 2016 and 58.2% at the end of May 2025.

2795. 🇨🇶 Correct Spelling Of Soldiers On Sark Occupation Stamp.

 

New issues -

🇬🇬 Guernsey Post 

🇨🇶 Issues inscribed Sark -

27 August 2025 - 80th anniversary of the liberation of Sark from Nazi German occupation & the Royal Visit of The Princess Anne and Admiral Timothy Lawrence - 8 stamps and 1 limited edition miniature sheet. Publicity put out by Guernsey Post for this issue included an illustration of the 69p value with the incorrect spelling of ‘Soldiers’ as ‘Soliders’. There was a delay to Guernsey Post despatching this issue because, it was reported, Buckingham Palace’s approval of the issue was delayed. We may speculate that this delay was attributable to the Palace officials discovering the spelling error.

  I have now received the set of stamps and miniature sheet I ordered from Guernsey stamps and both ordinary stamp from sheets and that contained in the miniature sheet have the correct spelling of Soldiers. And that would seem to be the end of that.

Basic sheet stamp

Stamp from miniature sheet

🇨🇾 Cyprus Post -

19 September 2025 - ‘Peace’ (part of an omnibus issue of various European postal administrations and The United Nations postal service) - 1x €5 stamp. Designed by Hammerle and Vogel. Knitted (!)

Rating:- *

🇮🇪 An Post (postal service of the Republic Of Ireland -

25 September 2025 - ‘Changing leaves’ - 3 self-adhesive stamps issued in sheetlets of 6 (2 of each stamp) - Designed by Jenny Dempsey from illustrations by Yanny Peters and lithographed by Enschedé. Rating:- ***.

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.

2264. 🇬🇧 Royal Mail Charles III First Day Cover Definitive Errors; Shirley Bassey Issue.

 

New issues.

🇬🇧 Royal Mail -

29 August 2023 - New definitives featuring King Charles III, variants without security slits produced in coils (originally and very helpfully reported by Norvic Stamps Blog). The 2 first day covers sold by Royal Mail were distributed with the low value and high value definitives released on 29 August 2023 but it emerged that the stamps used on the covers were lacking the security slits which were present on the stamps as sold at post office counters. Having now received examples of these first day covers I illustrate the stamps as used on the first day covers for comparison with the counter-sold stamps (note that shade differences in the illustrations are due to the reproduction rather than the stamps themselves). These are significant differences and examples of the first day covers are a necessary part of any modern Great Britain collection. These fdc varieties of the stamps are not officially available in an unused condition. Rating:- *****.

  We seem now to have the following King Charles III definitives:-

Code M23LMAIL (counter stamps) - 

Issued 4 April 2023 -

2nd

1st

2nd Large

1st Large

£2.20p

28 August 2023 - 

With full security features - 

1p

2p

5p

10p

20p

50p

£1

£2

£5

Lacking security slit from coils (only available on First day covers but Norvic has been able to supply a number of unused stamps which have all now been allocated to customers)

1p

2p

5p

10p

20p

50p

£1

£2

£5

Code M23LMEIL (from booklets of 8) -

2nd

1st

Code M23LMFIL (from booklets of 4) -

1st

2nd L

1st L

Code M23LMBIL (business sheets) -

2nd

1st

2nd L

  Therefore we currently seem to have 31 King Charles III definitive stamps to start off our collections of stamps of the new reign. However, this will not be for long as the tiresome Shirley Bassey 70th anniversary in show business issue due on 21 September 2023 will include, inevitably, an expensive Prestige Booklet (cost £22.50) which will include a pane of King Charles III definitives (1 x 2nd Class, 2 x 1st Class and 1 x 10p) with the code M23L MPIL, so that will push the total up to 34 King Charles III definitives.

The pane as shown on the Royal Mail internet site -

Ian Billings in his Norvic Stamps Blog is depicting a real pane which shows some differences from that shown on the Royal Mail site:-

The rest of the booklet is shown below - 

The 8 basic stamps will be issued in 2 strips each of 4 se-tenant stamps and the miniature sheet contains 4 different stamps - 

  As if this was not enough, Miss Bassey also warrants the issue of a ‘Collectors sheet’ made up of the 8 different stamps with attached labels and a snip at a trifling £12.40.

  The issue was ‘designed’ by Royal Mail Group Ltd and lithographed by Cartor and is perforated 14.5.

  Rating:- *.