New issues -
🇱🇰 Sri Lanka Post -
4 June 2023 - Commemoration of the Most Venerable Henepola Gunarathana Nayaka Maha Thero - 1 stamp. Lithographed. Rating:- ***.
🇲🇲 Myanmar Post -
1 June 2023 - Endemic birds of Myanmar, the Burmese tit - 1 stamp. Lithographed by Security Printing Works (Myanmar). Rating:- *****.
🇬🇧 Royal Mail -
9 June 2023 - Quatercentenary of the publication of Shakespeare’s First Folio of plays, Post and Go stamps dispensed from kiosk A009 located at the Shakespeare Birthday Trust gift shop in Stratford upon Avon - Union Flag and Machin Head stamps with new site locating inscription ‘Shakespeare BPT’ and additional inscription ‘First Folio 400’. These inscriptions will continue to be used until the end of 2023.
22 June 2023 - 75th anniversary of the arrival of the Windrush in Britain - 8 stamps. The designs will be revealed to the public at an event to be held at the Black Cultural Archives in Brixton on 15 June 2023. The stamps were designed by five artists of Caribbean descent. The arrival of the migrants aboard the Windrush effectively began the era of mass migration from abroad to Britain. Foreign migration to Britain was previously noted by one of the four Settlers Tale stamps issued on 6 April 1999 as part of the series issued to commemorate the new millennium.
🇹🇱 Postal service of Timor Leste -
Date of issue unknown ?2012 ?Unreleased - AICEP Lubrapex 2012 philatelic exhibition - 1 stamp. The Joint Stamp Issues internet site has recently reported that one of its contributors, Wenchao Chen of the People’s Republic of China, has discovered a sheet of stamps which appear to represent the issue from the Timor Leste postal service released as part of the omnibus issue of the Lusophone countries issued in 2012. Each postal service released a single stamp commemorating a literary figure of each respective country; in the case of Timor Leste the depicted literary figure is the poet Francisco Borja Da Costa who wrote the words of the Timorese national anthem but who was executed at the age of 29 by the Indonesians the day after they invaded East Timor in 1975. Chen has reported a sheet of 50 of these stamps - the first time that anyone has been aware of them - though they may have been issued almost 11 years ago though equally they may not have been officially released at all or they may have been issued at any time since 2012. News of Timorese stamps is scant and infrequent and the stamps may well have been issued without anyone being made aware of them. We will see in due course. The stamp is certainly in the style of the other stamps in the omnibus.
The imprint on the lower border of the sheet confirms that the stamps were printed at INCM (Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda), the National printing house in Portugal in 2012.
🇳🇿 New Zealand Post -
In the scramble to produce collectibles to shore up its contribution to the finances of New Zealand Post, its Stamps and Collectables department has announced that it is to stray into the world of digital stamps and non fungible tokens and that its first such products will feature the 1898 pictorial stamps. It’s fascinating how ever more there is a necessity for things virtual rather than real in this world where British stamps feature foreign comic characters and toy elves and goblins. Doubtless someone with money to burn will be attracted by these products (or are they non-products?).
