2544. 🇮🇳 🇧🇩 India’s Olympic Games Stamps; New Philatelic Future For Bangladesh?

New issues -

🇮🇳 India Post -

5 August 2024 - Olympic Games 2024 hosted by Paris - 1 miniature sheet containing 4 different stamps. Rating:- ***.

🇯🇪 Jersey Post -

6 August 2024 - Wetland birds (see Blog 2529) - 6 stamps and 1 miniature sheet containing all 6 stamps (the basic stamps were illustrated in Blog 2529, the miniature sheet is now also illustrated here). Designed by Elvense Illustration and lithographed by bpost. Rating:- *.

🇲🇾 Pos Malaysia -

8 August 2024 - Joint issue of the ASEAN Post organisation. Lithographed. Rating:- ***.

Commonwealth events 

Downfall of Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh 5 August 2024.

  After months of violent protests against her regime, the primeminister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, the daughter of the country’s leader at the time of the war of Independence against Pakistan, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, has resigned as protestors stormed her official residence. Hasina fled the country in an aircraft supplied by the country’s military and is seeking refuge in India. During the demonstrations against her oppressive and failed regime, thousands have been killed. Following Hasina’s fight to India a mob tore down a statute of Sheikh Mujib in Dhaka, in a manner similar to the demolition of the statue of Salam Hussein in Baghdad after his overthrow.

  This momentous event will undoubtedly have an important effect on the stamps which are issued by the Bangladesh postal administration as for several years many, if not most, stamp issues have iconised Sheikh Mujib as the Father of Bangladesh and as well as featuring Mujib have also frequently depicted Sheikh Hasina. Presumably the stamp subjects and designs were chosen at the behest of Hasina’s government to glorify her increasingly unpopular regime.

  So Bangladesh appears to face a new future and with it its postage stamps and I assume we have seen the back of Hasina’s frequent philatelic depictions.

Bangladesh’s most recent stamp issue (17 May 2024) ostensibly to commemorate World Telecommunication and Information Society Day but used as an excuse to include portraits of Hasina and Mujib in the design - 

23 September 2022 - one of several recent stamps depicting Hasina and Mujib - 

28 September 2022 - stamp commemorating Hasina’s 75th birthday -

2543.🇱🇨🇩🇲🇬🇩 Caribbean Gold May Bring New Stamps.

 

🇱🇨🇩🇲🇬🇩 While Australia Post is busy issuing stamps commemorating all the Australian women who have won gold medals at the Paris Olympic Games (there are one or two Australian men who have won gold but they’re a little thin on the ground at present) we might just speculate about two possible future new issues from Commonwealth countries which have become rather stamp-shy in recent years - Saint Lucia and Dominica. 

  Both of the Caribbean countries have had one of their athletes win the country’s first ever Olympic gold medal. In the case of Saint Lucia, Julien Alfred won the Women’s 100 metre race and for Dominica, Thea LaFond took the Women’s Triple Jump Olympic title. 

  The postal administration of Saint Lucia is known to have last issued a postage stamp on 22 February 2019 and the postal service of Dominica most recently released a postage stamp on 18 November 2020 (items issued the following year were personalised stamp sheets produced by a philatelic ‘agency’ and almost certainly had nothing to do with the Dominica postal service) and so therefore the philatelic celebration of their respective gold medalists would be an apt way for the two nations to celebrate these great sporting feats by the two distinguished local athletes.

These are worthy possible modern commemoratives to look out for.

  When I was reading about these Caribbean successes I was reminded about the Grenada Olympic gold medal success back in 2012 when the local athlete Kirani James won the 100 metres final. The Grenadan government announced that a commemorative stamp issue would be released to honour Kirani James’s success but when I visited Grenada on 29 November 2012 I found that while supplies of the stamps had arrived in the island, permission had not then been given for them to be issued. Subsequently, though I remained vigilant, I never did see an announcement about the stamps having been released and I never saw them being offered for sale by any dealers.

  The issue was made up of two miniature sheets - one containing three different stamps and the other of a single stamp.

  In preparing this piece I googled the issue and to my surprise I found both miniature sheets being offered for sale on E Bay by Imperial Mint which, it appears, is linked to Intergovernmental Philatelic Corporation (IGPC) and which, when you look at its internet site, has thousands of IGPC products for sale going back many years. Presumably these Grenadan stamps are from IGPC stock which have been there since the issue was first prepared and the sale of these stamps does not imply that they were ever actually issued in Grenada.  They may have status of Prepared for issue but not released. Perhaps someone will know the answer. Regardless, they’re interesting and reasonably priced and therefore worth adding, I think, to a collection of Grenada or Olympics stamps.

🇦🇺 Australia Post -

announced on 5 August 2023 - Australian gold medal winners at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris - stamps issued in sheetlets of 10 and designed by Jo Muré and lithographed by RA Print and perforated 13. Rating:- ***.

BMX Cycling, Women’s BMX racing - Saya Sakakibara - 1 stamp -

Tennis, Men’s Doubles - Matthew Ebden and John Peers - 1 stamp -

Swimming, Women’s 200 metre backstroke - Kaylee McKeown - 1 stamp -

Swimming, Men’s 50 metre freestyle - Cameron McEvoy - 1 stamp -

2542. 🇭🇰 Hong Kong’s Disney Stamps.

 

New issues -

🇭🇰 Hong Kong Post -

12 September 2024 - ‘Disney special stamps - 6 stamps and & 5 miniature sheets (1 containing a single $10 stamp, 1 containing all 6 stamps, 1 self adhesive sheet containing all 6 stamps, 1 shaped sheet containing a single $20 stamp and the other a shaped sheet containing a single $50 stamp) (total cost - $151.80, equal to £15.19). Designed by Venus Ng and lithographed. Rating:- 0.

🇦🇺 Australia Post -

announced 2 August 2024 - Australian gold medal winners at the Paris Olympic Games  (sold in sheetlets of 10 stamps) -

Canoe Slalom, Women’s C-1, Jessica Fox - 1 stamp. Lithographed by RA Print. Rating:- ***.

Swimming, Women’s 4 x200 metres Freestyle relay - 1 stamp. Lithographed by RA Print. Rating:-***.

2541. 🇸🇬🇬🇩🇲🇼Singapore New Issues; Grenada-Korea Joint Issue, New Malawi Surcharges..

 

New Issues.

🇸🇬 Singapore Post -

29 July 2024 - My Stamp issue - 1 miniature sheet containing 5 identical stamps (1 each of 5 different values with attached much larger labels. Lithographed by Secura. Rating:- ***.

Thanks to Anonymous  for pointing out that the sheet contains 5 different values in the comment below. I have corrected the above to avoid confusion.

8 August 2024 - Joint issue of the 10 ASEAN postal administrations. Lithographed by Secura. Perforated 13. Rating:- ***.

9 September 2024 - Jurong Lake Gardens - 4 stamps. Designed by Wong Wui Kong and lithographed by Secura and perforated 13. Rating:- ****.

 20 September 2024 - Peranakan Museum - 10 stamps (5 vertically se-tenant pairs). Designed by Hazel Lee and printed by lithography. Rating:- ****.

🇬🇩 Grenada Postal Corporation -

1 August 2024 - Joint issue with the Republic of Korea - 2 stamps. The Korean and Grenada postal service both issued a se-tenant pair of stamps to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Korea and Grenada as a joint issue. Rating:- *****.

Korean issue - 

28 to 30 July 2024 - CARICOM 47th Heads of Government Meeting hosted by the government of Grenada in the Grenada capital of St George’s. It is quite possible that the Grenadan postal service will issue stamps to commemorate the meeting but no announcement about any such issue is yet known to have been made.

🇲🇼 Malawi postal service - 

5 July 2024 - Previously issued definitive stamps reissued with surcharges applied to produce new values -  4 stamps. Rating:-*****. These stamps are reported in a communication by Steven Zirinsky of Zirinsky Stamps and on the Zirinsky Stamps internet site.