The Diamond Jubilee

In a big year for stamps being issued by the countries of The Commonwealth, what with the Olympic Games, the Charles Dickens bicentenary and, in my opinion a rather strange event to commemorate - the centenary of the sinking of The Titanic - by far the most important commemorative issue by many of the territories will be the diamond jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II who has the title of Head Of The Commonwealth. She succeeded to the thrones of The United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan and Ceylon and all their dependent territories on 6 February 1952 and her coronation was held on 2 June 1953 at Westminster Abbey. She was born on 21 April 1926 and her succession at the age of 25 followed the death of her father, George VI, who had had an operation for lung cancer in September 1951. At the time of the king's death she was famously in Timbertops Hotel in Kenya as part of a Commonwealth tour which she was carrying out with Prince Philip, Duke Of Edinburgh, her husband whom she had married on 20 November 1947. At present Elizabeth II is Queen of The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Lucia, St. Kitts Nevis, St. Vincent and The Grenadines, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, The Solomon Islands and Tuvalu as well as the dependent territories of these states including The Falkland Islands, South Georgia and The South Sandwich Islands, The British Antarctic Territory, Gibraltar, St. Helena with Ascension Island and Tristan Da Cunha, The British Indian Ocean Territory, Bermuda, Anguilla, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Montserrat, The Pitcairn Islands, The Cook Islands, Niue and Tokelau, as well as the crown dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and The Isle Of Man. We may expect stamp issues from all of these territories to appear over the coming months although the recently elected prime minister of Jamaica has said that she wishes to turn the country into a republic and the Turks and Caicos islands have not issued any stamps for several years (surely this is too important an event for them to miss). We have already seen stamp issues from Royal Mail, Canada, Belize*, St. Vincent and The Grenadines, Bermuda*, the Cook Islands*, The British Indian Ocean Territory*, St. Helena*, Gibraltar*, Saint Lucia*, The Isle Of Man*, Ascension*, Tristan Da Cunha*, Jersey and Guernsey. All the issues marked with * are part of a huge omnibus set designed by CASCO but not restricted only to those countries which it normally serves. Each country taking part in the omnibus is issuing 6 diamond-shaped stamps and 2 miniature sheets. Guernsey has issued 6 stamps and a miniature sheet, St. Vincent has released a surprisingly tasteful sheetlet of 3 stamps and 1 miniature sheet and Jersey has, exploitatively, produced 2 x £2 stamps in sheetlets of four with the same stamps produced as a miniature sheet as well as the same miniature sheet notoriously being issued with a tiny diamond stuck on it and sold for £125 plus VAT to British customers (face value £4!).

The Guernsey issue is of particular interest since one of the values depicts the Queen with the American President, Obama, no doubt to make this issue particularly of interest in The United States in the hope of boosting sales there. I think this must be the first case of an island of the British Isles featuring a living foreign head of state on one of its postage stamps (in fact I don't think that a dead former head of state of a foreign country has ever been depicted before). It is true that Popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II have featured on miniature sheets from The Isle Of Man but always on valueless labels or borders, never on the stamps themselves. Queen Elizabeth's reign has already broken many records. Now that she has completed sixty years on the throne, she has become the second longest reigning English and British monarch (King George III had achieved 59 years 3 months and 5 days on the throne) but still has a little way to go to surpass Queen Victoria who reigned for 63 years 7 months and 3 days. Queen Elizabeth has already beaten Queen Victoria as the oldest reigning monarch - she will be 86 in April while Victoria only lived to the age of 81 years, 7 months and 29 days. Having also celebrated her diamond wedding anniversary as long ago as 2007, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip have also achieved the longest ever royal marriage, their nearest rivals being King George III and Queen Charlotte who were married for 57 years 2 months and 10 days, King George surviving his wife for another fourteen and a half months after her death.

The Diamond Jubilee therefore should give us some quite memorable issues from the countries of which Elizabeth II is the queen and no doubt we will be able to add to them with stamps issued by other Commonwealth countries which honour the queen for her devoted service to The Commonwealth. The stamps really do commemorate a historic event and apart from the ridiculously exploitative items which may appear, and have already done so, are very collectable.

Holograms On New Nigerian Stamps & £261 Paid For South Sudan Set.

In 2010 Nigeria issued nine stamps, including redrawn definitive values, with small holograms applied to them, presumably as security devices. I am not aware of any publicity put out by The Nigerian Post Office regarding this issue nor have I seen any dealers yet offering them for sale. The addition of a hologram is rather surprising since it would seem to be quite a sophisticated device to be included on Nigerian stamps as their appearance is usually rather primitive in nature and the printing by Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Limited who have printed most Nigerian stamps since 1968, often results in a poor quality finished product. Most of the nine stamps bear the inscription "2000 YEARS OF NIGERIAN (some say "NIG") ART". The nine values are:- N20, N30, 4xN50, N90, N100 and N120. The holograms appear to be in two formats - either round or rectangular. It is perhaps not too surprising that these stamps have not come on to the market yet since it often takes many months for new Nigerian issues to be available to dealers - I have not yet seen a stamp dealer's advertisement offering the 2009 "road safety" single stamp issue for sale. I have no doubt that these stamps will come along eventually and those who wish to buy them need only to be patient.

Meanwhile, on the subject of patience, only the second complete set of three of the first issue of stamps by South Sudan to be offered on E Bay was sold today and someone was so desperate to get them that they paid an astonishing US$415.10 (£267) to buy them. We must remember that 100,000 of each value of this set was printed and therefore there must surely be enough of the stamps around to meet everyone's collecting needs. However I do note that quite a number of the stamps have now been put up for sale on the internet and usually the offer is just for two of the values (the flag and president stamps). For some reason most sellers can not get hold of the coat of arms stamp to include it in the sale. It may be that that particular value has been set aside by the South Sudan Post Office for use on ordinary mail and in consequence not been put forward for philatelic sale. It is also worth noting that the seller of the second complete set sold on E Bay was based in China where the stamps were printed and there may be an availability there as a result. I still suspect that complete sets of these stamps will eventually come on to the market at reasonable prices. It's all a matter of being patient.

Are Tonga's Philatelic Floodgates About To Open?

I was very pleased to discover that Tonga was about to start issuing stamps again after a break of several years (see blog of 3 February 2012) but I am now less happy to discover that the firm which has masterminded this relaunch is Philatelic Incorporated which has produced huge numbers of stamps for The Cook Islands and its subsidiary philatelic entities (Aitutaki, Penrhyn and, now, Rarotonga) over the last couple of years. Not only have a large number been issued but many of them have had very high face values. The latest exploits by this agency on behalf of The Cook Islands postal service include the issuing of 8 stamps and 2 miniature sheets to commemorate the 22nd World Scout Jamboree in ..... Sweden (so not very close to The Cook Islands then) and this has presented the opportunity to use up old unsold stock by overprinting a set of 4 stamps and a miniature sheet issued a couple of years ago in two versions - a gold overprint and a silver overprint (why?). The total face value of that little lot was $20 and all produced at minimal cost by Philatelic Incorporated. Then in January, 2 stamps were issued in sheetlets of four (in that form enticing collectors to buy 2 sets instead of one) by The Cook Islands to commemorate the beatification of Pope John Paul II (a generous tribute since only 16.8% of the country's population is Catholic or perhaps it's just that papal issues are usually big sellers). Oh, and by the way, stamps of a similar nature were also issued for Penrhyn and Aitutaki making 6 different stamps in all or you could buy 12 if you bought the sheetlets. Remarkable restraint was shown by them not issuing a set for Rarotonga, or maybe that is to follow. The stamps show portraits of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI and appear to be by the stamp artist Derek Miller whose portraits of the popes are much better than the ones he produced last year of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to commemorate their wedding.

Gold & silver overprints on the same stamp.

So, does the same stamp issuing fate await Tonga and will the new issue floodgates open up from the country? Signs are not good. The agency took over in November 2011 and seemed to think that an emergency Christmas issue was necessary with two stamps being produced for Tonga and two more for Niuafo'ou although they were not issued until 24 December which was not very practical for the Tongan public to be able to use them on their Christmas mail. In January the agency rushed out a new definitive set for Tonga depicting native birds, 12 stamps in all with values up to $10 although if previous form with The Cook Islands is anything to go by, much higher face values will follow and the whole lot will be overprinted, perhaps in gold and silver(!), for use on official mail, which means for use on mail from the Tonga Philatelic Bureau. Niuafo'ou, meanwhile, has had 6 stamps and 2 miniature sheets produced for it which depict whales. All the designs are simple photographs manipulated with a computer to add the country name and value so we can be sure that not a lot of money was spent at the design stage. It is interesting to note that although the agency now represents the post offices of two countries it is now producing stamps for six philatelic entities. Let us hope they do not take over the issues of Tuvalu or else we may find stamps being issued for all their individual islands as notoriously happened in the 1980's. I am now giving up collecting the new issues of Cook Islands and its appendices unless the issue is strictly directly relevant to the territory and I hope that I do not feel the same about the issues of Tonga in the next few months. Time will tell.

The new definitive set was not only issued in ordinary sheets but also as a miniature sheet, as illustrated above, so collectors are faced with a double-sized bill with this issue as happened with The Cook Islands and its associated entities. Is this really the way to go about things in these times of financial difficulty?

More New Zealand Personalised Stamps.

Apart from the Vietnam-related stamp mentioned in the previous blog a wide range of subjects make up the 2010 and 2011 "personalised" stamps collections from New Zealand. No explanation of the designs is supplied by New Zealand Post and, as previously mentioned, the collections are made up of sheetlets of gummed or self-adhesive stamps as well as two or three booklets of self-adhesive stamps. The 2010 collection comprises 2 self-adhesive sheetlets, each of 20 different stamps, one sheetlet of 20 gummed stamps and a se-tenant pair of two additional self-adhesive stamps. Additionally there are 2 booklets; one commemorates the 170th anniversary of the New Zealand Customs Service (10 stamps - 9 different designs) and the other celebrates Te Papa Museum in Wellington (10 self-adhesive stamps, 2 each of 5 different designs). The latter booklet is still on sale in the museum gift shop as I witnessed myself on a visit there a week ago. All the stamps of the 2010 collection are either 50c or 60c values. The 2011 collection comprises one sheetlet of 20 self-adhesive stamps and a partial sheet of 21 gummed stamps (4 rows of 5 stamps and one additional attached stamp. Additionally there are 2 self-adhesive booklets; one commemorates the 75th anniversary of Mercy Hospital in Dunedin (2 each of 5 different designs) and the other commemorates The Heart Foundation (10 stamps, 5 of 2 different values). All the stamps of the 2011 collection are 60c values. Presumably if you make the values up to the correct amount, these stamps are usable on international mail and by making them all available this way New Zealand Post has made these stamps fully eligible for full catalogue status and highly collectable. Interesting.

The Mercy Hospital booklet.

The Heart Foundation booklet and stamps.

A charming portrait of an unknown elderly couple, perhaps they were celebrating their golden or diamond wedding anniversary.

The Customs Service booklet and two of the stamps.

The 2011 self-adhesive sheetlet of 20 stamps.

New Zealand Honours The Vietcong But Do They Know It?

The New Zealand Post Office has recently put on sale collections of the personalised stamps which were produced in 2010 and 2011 and presented them as large blocks of setenant designs, some self-adhesive and some gummed and one or two designs in booklets. All very confusing and making available to the general public designs which were previously personal to the individuals who had paid to have these stamps produced using their private pictures and illustrations. However, the stamps are of great interest to philatelists and questionably should be included in catalogues since the stamps have now become "freely available to the general public". However the New Zealand Post Office may have bitten off more than it can chew since one of the designs (illustrated above) appears to honour the Viet Cong against whom New Zealand fought a war from June 1964 to December 1972. It appears to me that the little old man on the design is actually Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the North Vietnamese, who brought an ignominious defeat on the Americans along with their allies which included the New Zealanders. Does New Zealand Post really think this is a suitable subject for stamps now put on sale to the public? Is this stamp an example of reconciliation? I suspect not. I think that this may be an embarrassment to New Zealand Post Office. I recommend buying these personalised stamps for their sheer interest value especially the Viet Cong design. I wonder if they will leave the design on sale when they realise that someone has pulled a fast one in getting them to produce the stamp. I will illustrate some of the less controversial designs in my next blog.

Tonga And Niuafo'ou Are Back; Nauru And Russia; South Sudan.

Apart from some provisional surcharges, Tonga has not issued any stamps since 2008 when two stamps and a miniature sheet were issued to commemorate the coronation of King Siaosi Tupou V.


That issue itself was the first to be released since 4 May 2005 when a miniature sheet had been produced celebrating whale watching off the coast of Tonga. Now, as announced on the WWF Stamp Shop website, it appears that Tonga is returning to stamp issuing since it is planning to release a set of stamps in February or March 2012 depicting local endangered wildlife in the form of the thorny seahorse. Additionally, the subsidiary philatelic entity of Niuafo'ou which has not issued any stamps since 2005 when it too released a "whale-watching" miniature sheet is also to issue a set of WWF stamps in February or March which depict the zebra shark. Previous Niuafo'ou WWF commemoratives depicting the blue crowned lorikeet, have most recently been surcharged to produce provisional stamps for use in Tonga in general and the first, issued July 2008, which is depicted below is exceedingly rare although the second, issued May 2010, is much more easily obtainable.



The WWF site also lists other forthcoming WWF stamps from Commonwealth countries:- Bahamas depicting the Caribbean flamingo (21 March 2012), Fiji depicting the collared lory (April 2012), Rarotonga depicting Cook Islands land snails (February or March 2012), South Georgia with south Atlantic seabirds (February or March 2012) and Nauru depicting the dragon moray (date open).
On the subject of Nauru, I drew attention to the set of 5 stamps that the country issued last year which commemorated the Russian space programme and expressed surprise that Nauru was releasing an issue on such a subject and said that Nauru was "not previously known for ....(having) a close relationship with Russia". How wrong was I? In fact Nauru has had a remarkably close relationship with Russia in recent years and there is a special Wikipedia entry on Nauru-Russia relations. The article alleges that the Russian mafia used Nauru banks to money launder in the 1990's, "approximately USD 70 billion owned by Russian mafia were held in Nauru banks. This equated to 700 times the country's annual output." Then, in 2009, Nauru became only the fourth country to recognise Abkazia and South Ossetia, the two breakaway regions of Georgia which had declared their independence with Russia's support (the other three countries were Nicaragua, Venezuala and Russia itself) and subsequently established diplomatic relations with South Ossetia. The Wikipedia article states that "Russian officials visited Nauru in March 2010 to discuss the allocation of the "huge aid grant" that Russia will be providing to the small country". It is fascinating the things that one discovers about the world through stamp collecting. I guess, if a "huge aid grant" is involved, that we may be expecting a few more future stamp issues from Nauru stressing the country's links with Russia!



Finally to South Sudan. In my blog of 14 November 2011, I highlighted that the first set of this new country's first ever stamp issue to be auctioned on E Bay realised an incredible sum of $231. In the last few days two of the three values were again auctioned on E Bay and this time achieved a more modest price of £31 although of course that left the buyer with the need to track down the missing 2.5ssp value which depicts the country's coat of arms.

Cayes Of Belize.

San Pedro, Ambergris Caye.

As reported last time, Stanley Gibbons has listed Rarotonga as a new philatelic entity in its stamp catalogue although sub-territories with no real political or postal need to issue their own stamps tend to have been given the cold shoulder since The Islands Of Tuvalu deluge of issues in the mid-1980's. The Cayes Of Belize is another short-lived philatelic entity which never received full catalogue status as Rarotonga has done although the stamps were produced in a fairly moderate manner by The Crown Agents which was about as respectable a philatelic agent as you could find at that time. Indeed, the Belize Post Office could even claim a precedent for the issue of stamps by The Cayes, which lie off the coast of Belize, since a type-written stamp (a form of stamp production not unknown elsewhere including the early issues of Uganda) was produced for use on a privately-operated postal service from St. George's Caye to Belize City and is known on covers dated between 28 July 1894 and 27 September 1895. The service was operated by Sydney Cuthbert, a well-off merchant in Belize City who had a summer residence in The Cayes, and having run a service for free on behalf of his neighbours for a while from 1892 he decided to recoup some of the running costs of the yacht he used to transport the post by charging 3c per letter and producing a stamp to be used to indicate that postage had been paid. The costs of professionally printed stamps were deemed to be too high and he therefore resorted to the use of a typewriter to produce the stamps. The stamps were tied to the covers by a straight-line rubber stamp in blue ink, the inscription being "CUTHBERT BROS", and a separate rubber straightline postmark indicated the date of carriage. All examples of this stamp are known applied to covers and no unused examples are known to exist.


Sydney Cuthbert.

On 30 May 1984 the first modern Cayes Of Belize definitive stamps were issued and the set consisted of nine values ranging from 1c to $5 and they showed various aspects of The Cayes, especially tourism, being very attractively designed by the excellent stamp artist, Gordon Drummond and lithographed by the now defunct House Of Questa. Some of the designs are illustrated below. Accompanying the basic set was an extremely difficult to find $10 booklet which included three different panes of stamps (4 x 25c and 2 different 4 x 75c) as well a fourth pane which consisted of a miniature sheet which illustrated a cover with one of Cuthbert's stamps on it and also contained one of the new $3 values which showed a map of Ambergris Caye. The miniature sheet was only available from the booklet.


pane 1 of the $10 booklet showing a Cuthbert stamp on cover.


Two types of inhabitants of The Cayes.


The high values.

I visited Belize myself in November 1989 and visited Ambergris Caye. The Belize Post Office had given up issuing Cayes stamps as early as 1985, one supposes due to poor sales which were probably inhibited by Gibbons' failure to catalogue them. I was able to purchase Cayes stamps at an ordinary counter in the main post office in Belize City but they had long sold out in San Pedro (the "capital" of Ambergris Caye). Following the first issue, several sets of commemoratives had been issued including four stamps which were part of the Crown Agents omnibus set which celebrated the 250th anniversary of Lloyd's List and for which Benham's had produced a "silk" first day cover postmarked at San Pedro (see below) (issued 6 June 1984), four stamps for the Los Angeles Olympic Games (5 October 1984) and four excellent stamps noting the 90th anniversary of the issue of Cuthbert's stamp (5 November 1984). On 20 May 1985, four stamps were issued which commemorated the birth bicentenary of John J Audubon, the American ornithologist, and it was these which were still on sale in Belize City in November 1989. One final issue of a se-tenant strip of four stamps and a miniature sheet which depicted various shipwrecks was issued later in 1985.



The Audubon set used at San Pedro.



One of two silk covers issued to commemorate the Lloyd's List anniversary.


Two of the four Lloyd's list stamps used at San Pedro.


San Pedro post office, November 1989.


Part of a cover with mixed frankings of Belize and Cayes Of Belize stamps posted at San Pedro.



Used at San Pedro, 1989.

Perhaps all these stamps were completely unnecessary but most of them are actually quite attractive and interesting and seem to have been available at ordinary post counters for use by the public on mail. Their status seems to be similar to that of the present Rarotonga stamp issues and are no less collectable than those stamps.
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