2849. 🇲🇲 Myanmar Commemorates 78th National Day.

 

New issues -

🇹🇴 Tonga Post -

3 December 2025 - 80th anniversary of the end of the ‘World Anti-Fascist War’ (Second World War) (see Blog 2846). This issue in the form of a sheetlet with face value of  $9 may be hard to come by judging by the response below from Tonga Post to my request to them for information on how to buy it. Available locally, Tonga Post does not seem to have any arrangements in place for its purchase by overseas collectors. 

Note the email does not mention that it may be purchased from Philatelic Collector Inc, its former agents based in the USA. It might be worth some enterprising dealer in New Zealand or Australia buying an air ticket and dropping in on Nuku’Alofa post office and purchasing as many as they can obtain to sell at a healthy profit.

🇭🇰 Hong Kong Post -

5 January 2026 - Chinese New Year, Year of the Horse, joint issue with the postal services of the Chinese People’s Republic and Macao - 1 miniature sheet containing 12 different stamps (4 each from territory). Lithographed. Rating:- ****.

🇲🇲 Myanmar Post 

4 January 2026 - 78th National Day (78th anniversary of independence) -  2 stamps. Designed by the Ministry of Information and lithographed by Security Printing Works, Myanmar and perforated 14. Rating:- ****.

2772. 🇳🇿 New Zealand To Issue New Round Kiwi Stamps.

 

New issues -

🇨🇰 Cook Islands Philatelic Bureau/Philatelic Collector Inc. -

2023 (no dates specified)

Products titled ‘Birds of the World’ with high face value. No products inscribed Cook Islands Penrhyn. No other details available. Each entity is stated to have released sets of 4 stamps, 1 miniature sheet containing 2 sets of the same stamps plus 4 ‘Deluxe souvenir sheets’ each containing a single stamp but illustrations of these are not available for all entities. Lithographed. Rating:- 0.

🇨🇰 Products inscribed Cook Islands -

2023 - The Pacific reef heron -

🇨🇰 Products inscribed Rarotonga -

2023 - The Morepork -0

🇨🇰 Products inscribed Aitutaki Cook Islands -

2023 - The peregrine falcon -

🇳🇿 New Zealand Post -

3 September 2025 Round kiwi stamps - 5 stamps and 1 miniature sheet containing all 5 stamps. Designed by Sacha Lees and lithographed by Brebner Print and perforated 14.5. Rating:- **.

Interestingly New Zealand Post seems to have taken it upon itself to rename the country as ‘Aotearoa New Zealand’.

2160. A New Commonwealth Philatelic Era.

 

  Now that the remarkable state funeral of, and the period of mourning for, the late HM Queen Elizabeth II are passed and her reign of more than 70 years steps into history where she herself may become known as Elizabeth The Great, the Elizabethan philatelic era is also ended and the Carolean philatelic age begun.

  The Commonwealth, founded in 1949 with just a handful of members - United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan and India - has now evolved into a unique international association of 56 countries, some of which were never linked historically to the old British Empire from which The Commonwealth was born.

  For many years the veteran stamp dealers, Stanley Gibbons, produced a catalogue, The Elizabethan, which included all the stamps issued by the various countries and territories of The Commonwealth during the reign of Queen Elizabeth as it proceeded down the years. Publication continued until, I think, the 1985 edition by which time, being entirely printed in book form and not available digitally - we were still of course in the pre-digital age - there were so many stamps to include that it was not feasible to feature all of them in an affordable single volume and publication of The Elizabethan ceased. 

  So let us start the new Carolean philatelic era with a new catalogue of Commonwealth stamps attempting to do what Gibbons’ Elizabethan did in the past - that is - to include in it all the postage stamps issued by the Commonwealth postage stamp entities during the reign of King Charles III which we date from 8 September 2022 when he succeeded to the throne. I will try to produce a list of stamps known to have been issued with a numbering system every couple of weeks or so. There will be some illustrations but many of the stamps will already have been featured in Commonwealth Stamps Opinion and so reference will be made to the edition of CSO in which the stamps were first announced and where they were illustrated to avoid repeating illustrating large numbers of stamps 

  The issues originating from exploitative philatelic agencies will not be included unless there is good reason to believe that they were sold freely to the particular philatelic entities’ general mail-sending public across ordinary local post office counters. The issues originating from IGPC  will generally be mentioned in a footnote only as will those produced and sold by Philatelic Collector Inc. Products released by Stamperija will not be included nor mentioned in footnotes unless there is good reason to believe that they were issued to address postal needs in the countries whose names are printed on them.

  Generally now, ‘countries’ do NOT issue stamps - they have them produced and sold on their behalf by governmental departments, private businesses or private philatelic agencies - and therefore it is more appropriate to include the issued stamps in the listing under headings which name the department or business or agency which release them rather than the country name; hence the stamps of Australia appear under the heading Australia Post and those of The United Kingdom under Royal Mail.

  These lists will include all present Commonwealth philatelic entities as well as those countries and territories with former, and often continuing, close links with Commonwealth countries, which made an appearance in the former Elizabethan Catalogue.

So let the new Carolean philatelic adventure begin. See Blog 2161.

  

2157. 🇺🇸 Oops! Quick Change. Philatelic Collector Corrects Overprint Error.

 

New issues.

🇺🇸 Philatelic Collector Inc.

🇨🇰 🇹🇴 Products inscribed Cook Islands, Aitutaki Cook Islands, Penrhyn Cook Islands, Kingdom Of Tonga and Niuafo’ou.

2022 - Tribute to the Late Queen Elizabeth II - 1 miniature sheet each containing 6 different stamps for each of the 5 philatelic entities. The illustrations of these issues on the Philatelic Collector Inc internet site have now been changed to correct the previously shown items which had the overprint ‘In Living Memory 1926 - 1922’ so that they now read ‘In Loving Memory 1926 - 2022’. (See Blog 2156). It’s interesting to note that the overprints are now lower case rather than upper case - the new inscriptions look rather less dignified and a little scruffy - signs of a rushed job I suppose.

  I expect we shall have to wait to see if any of the incorrectly inscribed overprints were actually printed and turn up on the market. I do hope not.

2156. 🇺🇸 Philatelic Collector Inc.To Issue Overprints With Wrong Date In Memory Of Queen Elizabeth II.

 

New issues.

🇺🇸 Philatelic Collector Inc.

 The United States-based ‘boutique philatelic agency’ (as it likes to call itself) has announced that it will release products to commemorate the late Queen Elizabeth II. The ‘boutique agency’ has a contract with the postal services of Tonga and Cook Islands to release philatelic products  on their behalf,

 All of the products are recently issued items - sheetlets, each containing 6 stamps, which commemorate the Platinum Jubilee of the late Queen - with the overprint in black on each stamp, the inscription being, “IN LOVING MEMORY/1926 - 1922” (sic). Elizabeth II was Queen of Cook Islands and had a link with Tonga as Head of The Commonwealth and issues in memory of Her Late Majesty are therefore to be expected.

 Of course there are not just issues with the country name inscriptions on them but also additional products with the names of islands which are integral parts of the two territories; there are therefore five sheetlets in all, inscribed Cook Islands, Aitutaki Cook Islands, Penrhyn Cook Islands, Kingdom of Tonga and Niuafo’ou.

  Illustrations of all the products show them with the ‘wrong year of death’ overprint - hopefully these illustrations show mock-ups rather than the real overprinted stamps or else one can see a second release of another five miniature sheets with the corrected inscription being on the cards.

  No specific date of issue has been stated for these products.

 

  

1857. 🇬🇧 ‘Unique’ Royal Mail 95th Birthday Pane.

The Royal Mail Stamps and Collectables internet site is advertising a combined Coin and Stamp cover to be sold for £19.99 which commemorates the 95th Birthday of Queen Elizabeth II to be issued on 21 April 2021 and which has on it “a unique pane” of Machin Head and regional definitive stamps and central label. The item is to be sold in a limited edition of 10000 and includes a new £5 coin which celebrates the Queen’s notable birthday. At this stage the site is only offering the pane cancelled on the cover but I wonder if the unused pane will also be offered. For a fleeting second I actually wondered if this was a Royal Mail April Fool joke but paying £19.99 for a potentially popular Machin item available only in this way is no joke at all. Rating:- 0.

The Commonwealth’s greediest stamp issuing territories of 2020:-

🇸🇱 For the fourth consecutive year Sierra Leone is revealed as having been the greediest stamp issuing territory in The Commonwealth during 2020 - or at least the despicable so-called philatelic agency, Stamperija,  which it allows to release philatelic products in its name is revealed to once more be the greediest philatelic item producer representing the postal service of a Commonwealth country. I only hope that any money paid by Stamperija to the Sierra Leone postal service is worth the ruining of the country’s reputation and the soiling of its name. In all I have identified that 1223 philatelic items (stamps, miniature sheets, sheetlets and booklets but not including the vast numbers of imperforate, hilariously-named ‘deluxe’ variants) were released with the name of Sierra Leone printed on them. We should not be too surprised either that the other two Commonwealth territories with a contract with Stamperija are highly placed in the list of 2020’s greediest territories - Maldives (458 items at no.3) and Mozambique (274 items at no.4). Neither should we be surprised that the appalling Australia Post pitches up at number 2 in the list with its vast outpouring of philatelic items during 2020 swollen by the items it releases with the names of Australian territories printed on them. Australia Post managed to unload 462 different items on to the market with the ghastly new range of My Stamps adding to the profusion. Badges of shame also, as we expected, for Royal Mail (at no. 5 with 195 items) and the British offshore islands (Isle of Man Post Office at no.6 with 126 items, Guernsey Post (Guernsey and Alderney) at no. 7 with 115 and Jersey Post at no. 10 with 99 items. The top 15 list is shown below but its main weakness is that it does not show total face value of the stamps produced by or for each territory as that may change things somewhat in that although the agency Philatelic Collector Inc’s two client postal services - those of Tonga and Cook Islands - are about tenth in the list the face values of many of the stamps and miniature sheets released for those territories were very high. Still this list gives a reasonable impression of which territories were producing or allowing to be produced in their names excessive numbers of philatelic products during 2020.

1. Sierra Leone (Stamperija) 1223.

2. Australia Post (Australia, Australian Antarctic Territory, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Island, Norfolk Island). 462.

3. Maldives (Stamperija) 458.

4. Mozambique (Stamperija) 274.

5. United Kingdom (Royal Mail) 195.

6. Isle Of Man (Isle Of Man Post Office) 126.

7. Guernsey Post (Guernsey, Alderney) 115.

8. New Zealand Post 108.

9. Cook Islands (Cook Islands, Aitutaki, Penrhyn, Rarotonga - Philatelic Collector Inc) 103.

10=. Jersey Post 99.

10=. Tonga (Tonga, Niuafo’ou - Philatelic Collector Inc) 99.

12. India Post 84.

13. Pos Malaysia (Malaysia) 80.

14. Bangladesh Post 62.

15. Singapore Post 60.

 

 Meanwhile the list of postal authorities which were most modest in their philatelic issuing was little changed from the previous year with 11 territories not known so far to have issued any stamps during 2020 and with 6 known to have issued only a single stamp. Interestingly three on the list are British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean area (Anguilla, Montserrat and Turks And Caicos Islands) and anyone collecting the stamps of the various dependent territories could put together a nice collection at a fairly modest price excepting the offshore Crown Dependencies (Jersey, Guernsey and Isle Of Man) and Gibraltar (though the number of products put out by Royal Gibraltar Post Office was somewhat reduced during 2020 to a total of 49 items). Hence with Akrotiri And Dhekelia never issuing stamps and territories such as Bermuda, Cayman Islands, St Helena, Pitcairn Islands, British Indian Ocean Territory and the postal services which are clients of Pobjoy Stamps/Creative Direction (Ascension Island, British Antarctic Territory, British Virgin Islands, Falkand Islands, South Georgia And The South Sandwich Islands and Tristan Da Cunha) all fairly to very modest in their releases a mini-global collection could be assembled but as it would represent the residual British Empire perhaps the concept would be far too imperialist to be acceptable in these current philatelic times!

1= Anguilla 0.

1= Cameroon 0.

1= eSwatini 0.

1= Lesotho 0.

1= Montserrat (IGPC) 0.

1= Rwanda 0.

1= St Kitts (IGPC) 0.

1= Saint Lucia 0.

1= Samoa 0.

1= Turks And Caicos Islands (IGPC) 0.

1= Zambia 0.

12= Barbados 1.

12= Nauru 1.

12=Pitcairn Island 1.

12. Seychelles 1.

12= Solomon Islands 1.

12= Vanuatu 1.