678. Papua New Guinea Commemorates Princess Charlotte And University; New Fish Stamps From Solomon Islands.

                                                 

  After what seemed to be a worryingly busy start to its new issue programme in the first half of 2015. Post PNG, the postal service of Papua New Guinea, has reduced pleasingly its pace of releasing new issues in the second half of the year. So far there have been 8 issues from Post PNG - Chinese New Year (5 January), Traditional paintings (9 March), 50th anniversary of Christian Leaders Training College (30 March), Traditional headdresses (22 June), 15th Pacific Games, Port Moresby (22 June), Achievement of Queen Elizabeth II in becoming the longest reigning British monarch (6 July) plus Its 2 latest issues which are:-

  3 August 2015 - Birth of Princess Charlotte of Cambridge, 4th in line to the throne of Papua New Guinea - 4 stamps and 2 miniature sheets. Rating:- ***.  

   19 October 2015 - 4 stamps and 2 miniature sheets - Golden Jubilee of the University of Papua New Guinea - designed by Kin Kaupa and lithographed by Southern Colour Print. The stamps also depict the logo of the 15th Pacific Games held in Port Moresby. This is a interesting and informative issue.  Rating:- *****.

  Singapore Post issued a pair of stamps on 3 December 2015 to commemorate the 8th ASEAN Para Games being held in Singapore from 3 to 9 December. The Games mascot, Nila, is featured on the 1st Local value. Rating:- ***.

                                                  

                                                   

  India Post issued 2 stamps and 1 miniature sheet on 3 December 2015 to commemorate the centenary of the Zoological Survey of India. Rating:- *****.

  The Guernsey Post Post And Go kiosk GG02 sited in the Envoy House post office in St. Peter Port will dispense "Guernsey Flag" Post And Go stamps with an additional inscription "Merry Christmas" from 8 to 24 December 2015. The Collectors' Strip will add a further 6 stamps to the total number of stamps issued by Guernsey Post during 2015.

  Intelligent AR has also announced that Royal Mail "kiosk A006 is retiring from the exhibition circuit and has a new permanent home. A site survey is being carried out and the kiosk will be installed in January 2016". The announcement does not state the location of the new site but underneath it is stated "This entry was posted in RAF Museum on December 5, 2015" so I guess there's no mystery in the future siting of A006 - the RAF Museum at Hendon, north London.

  Pos Malaysia issued a set of 4 stamps and 1 miniature sheet on 4 December 2015 to coincide with the Four Nation Stamp Exhibition being held in Malacca from 4 to 6 December. The designs depict traditional costumes of the participating territories - Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand. Rating:- ****.

                                               

                                               

                                

  Stamperija's latest announcements include a report that 9 new stamps which depict fish will be issued on the behalf of Solomon Islands on 1 November 2015. This does not look like a typical Stamperija issue and I am tempted to think that the stamps are definitives and are likely to actually be on sale in post offices to the ordinary Solomon Islands general public for use on mail rather than being purely philatelic collectables. Rating:- ****.

                                       

                                                 

                                            

  Stamperija has also released philatelic products with the name of Sierra Leone printed on them. With a stated "date of issue" of 25 September 2015, 10 "sheetlets", each made up of 4 different "stamps", and 10 accompanying "miniature sheets" have been placed on sale by the Lithuania-based philatelic agency. The umbrella theme of the products is "Impressionism" and "Post-Impressionism" and the depicted subjects appear to have no conceivable connection to Sierra Leone. The items are produced in a "limited edition" of 1000. The artists whose works are depicted are Cezanne, Monet, Manet, Renoir, Degas, Matisse, Mary Cassatt, Bazille, Pissarro and "American Impressionists". Rating:- 0.

         

         

         

         

  I do not feel particularly excited about Canada Post's proposed 2016 programme - it seems just more of the same in that the featured subjects, with one or two exceptions, will be parts of ongoing series which were nearly all depicted during 2015 and earlier.

  The planned subjects are:- Chinese New Year; Centenary of the No. 2 Construction Battalion (Black History Month issue); National Hockey League series (puck handlers); Centenary of women's suffrage in Canada; Flower series - the hydrangea, "Official Birds" - which means, I think, Birds of the provinces and territories - Atlantic puffin, rock ptarmigan, sharp-tailed grouse, great horned owl and common raven; "Haunted Canada"; Dinosaurs; Canadian photography; UNESCO World Heritage sites; Christmas; Canada Post Foundation Community stamp and a new definitive stamp depicting Queen Elizabeth II. "A couple of special issues are still under wraps and will be announced closer to their launch date".

  The Catalogue supplement of the December edition of Gibbons Stamp Monthly includes only one Commonwealth country with issues consigned to the appendix section - St Vincent And The Grenadines - 14 issues released by its foreign philatelic agents, all with little or no relevance in subject matter to St. Vincent. In addition, the Catalogue editor also lists 128 Appendix "issues" from the individual islands of The Grenadines of St. Vincent released during 2013 and 2014. Of course, I do not mention those particular products at all in this blog. 

677. Royal Mail Reveals Postal Rates To Mars - £11,602.25p Up to 100g.

                                      

  Is Royal Mail about to issue a new £11,602.25p definitive stamp?

  In items published in the British newspapers today, the story is told of 5 year old Oliver Giddings of Lytham St. Anne's in Lancashire who is a great enthusiast for space travel and who decided that he wanted to send a Christmas card to the planet Mars. Apparently he wasn't sure if he had enough stamps that would be needed on his item of mail and so he wrote to Royal Mail to enquire just how much it would cost him to get his Christmas card to his chosen destination. 

  Charmingly, Royal Mail decided that it would answer Oliver's question as accurately as possible and so it contacted NASA which advised that it would cost about £12,000 to carry a letter of up to 100g in weight to The Red Planet. Royal Mail advised that the exact sum would be £11,602.25p but that included a fee of £2.25p so that Royal Mail's International team could transport the Christmas card to NASA's launch site - the remaining £11,600 was for transporting the cover the 567 million km from the launch site to Mars itself.

  The newspapers have not reported whether or not Oliver decided to go ahead with sending his Christmas card or whether the postal rate proved a little more than his pocket money could pay for. 

  I wonder if some enterprising first day cover producer even now is planning their special Mars covers at a knockdown price of, say, £14,000. Likewise, now that Royal Mail knows exactly what the postal rate to Mars should be, is the postal organisation preparing to issue its first £11,602.25p definitive stamp? That would be an extraordinary item to add any collection of Machin definitives.

  I do hope, given all the positive publicity this represents for Royal Mail, that the organisation has presented young Oliver with a Star Wars presentation pack. Perhaps someone could come up with an affordable presentation pack of spoof definitives covering the postal rates not only to Mars but other planets in our solar system at the appropriate rates.

 The Falkland Islands postal administration will issue a set of 6 stamps on 13 January 2016 on the subject of local birds of prey. The lovely stamps were designed by Georgina Strange and lithographed by BDT International. Rating:- *****.

                                   

                                    

                                   

  The Pitcairn Islands postal administration will issue a set of 4 Christmas stamps on 9 December 2015. The attractive designs are by Lucas Kukler and lithographed by Southern Colour Print. Rating:- *****.

                                  

                                

  The Universal Mail United Kingdom website postal service features 4 new strips, each of 5 different stamps all for use on international postcards sent by airmail. The first 3 sets are "Bespoke" which means that they are only available at a single site - the tourist attraction which is sponsoring the items - and not sold directly to collectors by Universal Mail themselves. Because of this highly limited availability I myself no longer bother to go to the often great difficulty involved in buying such items for my collection.

  However the fourth "strip" is not "Bespoke" and is therefore sold by Universal Mail and should be available from more sources in the area to which it is relevant and I am therefore happy to add it to my collection.

  The Bespoke strips are:-

  No. UK0148 - The House of Commons, dated 05/15:-

             

                                        

  No. UK0149 - Tate Gallery, dated 06/15:-

                                                             

                                          

  No. UK0151 - Belfast Castle, dated 06/15:-

                                                              

                                            

  "England" series - available from Universal Mail and other sites - No. UK0150 - The Cotswalds:-

                                                               

                                              

676. New Tristan Da Cunha Definitive Issue Features Mailships.

  The postal administration of Tristan Da Cunha will issue a new definitive series of 12 stamps on 8 December 2015 which features ships which carried mail to and from the island during the period 1904 to 1953. This excellent and well-researched series was designed by Andrew Robinson and lithographed by BDT International Security Printing Ltd.  We are of course not surprised that Pobjoy Stamps/Creative Direction are responsible for Tristan's new issues when we see the quality and appropriateness of this issue as well as just how interesting the set is to any collector. Rating:- *****.

   In Blog 671, I mentioned the recent joint issue between Singapore Post and India Post and illustrated the Singapore issue. I now depict the pair of stamps released by India Post as its contribution to the joint issue. Rating:- ***.

                                   

                                   

  Sri Lanka Post has recently released 2 single stamp issues:-

- 10 November 2015 - Deepavali. Rating:- ****.

                                              

- 23 November 2015 - Commemoration of Anton Chekhov, Russian playwright (1860 - 1904). The stamp commemorates the 125th anniversary of Chekhov's visit to what was then Ceylon. His story "Gusev" draws on his experience of his voyage to Ceylon. Rating:- ****.