Tuvalu 2005 miniature sheets

Another very satisfying outcome for me of my recent visit to the Stafford stamp fair was stumbling upon a dealer by chance whom I discovered to be selling two miniature sheets from Tuvalu which I have been looking for to add to my collection for several years.  I was not aware of these two items which were originally released in 2005 until they first appeared in the catalogue column of Gibbons Stamp Monthly during the course of 2007. Until my visit to Stafford I had never seen the sheets offered for sale by any dealer nor had I noticed them for sale on E Bay. I had presumed that I would never find them and did not even leave a space in my collection for them. They are not any of the run of the mill, locally irrelevant issues being produced in Tuvalu's name by the New York philatelic agency but one is part of an infrequent series of issues which I suppose must be produced by the government of Taiwan to emphasise its diplomatic links with Tuvalu and the other could be a locally produced overprint on a previously issued miniature sheet. 

 The Taiwan related issue was released on 5 May 2005 and commemorated the state visit of President Chen Shui-bian to Tuvalu and was in a similar format to a sheet issued the previous year to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Taiwan-Tuvalu diplomatic relations. The second sheet I had been hunting down was released on 10 July 2005 to commemorate the centenary of Motofua Secondary School and consisted of overprints and $2.50 surcharges on the two stamps contained in a miniature sheet which was originally issued on 8 May 2002 and which had commemorated the attendance by two Tuvaluan children at the United Nations Children's Forum in New York. A locally pertinent issue had been made on 9 March 2001 which marked the first anniversary of the death of 18 girls in a fire tragedy in a dormitory of Motofua Secondary School and this must have been a terribly traumatic event for the people of such a small nation as Tuvalu. Given the recent nature of the tragedy it is not surprising that the little nation wished to philatelically commemorate a more joyous event for the school - its centenary.

 The Taiwan related issues are interesting in themselves. Such items can be found from a number of small Commonwealth territories where either The People's Republic Of China or Taiwan have managed to gain influence with the governments of the small and/or impoverished states and the various stamp issues represent a sort of philatelic diplomatic war between the two rival Chinese states. From time to time the Japanese also manage to get some of these countries to issue stamps to show how the territories have been aided by them but all this fades into insignificance when you think about the United States' philatelic neo-imperialism represented by the huge outpouring of issues by a New York agency with the names of 20 or so Commonwealth states inscribed on them, which are mostly dedicated to depicting contemporary United States culture and aspects of American history which clearly have no relevance to the country whose name appears on the "stamps". Tuvalu is, alas, one of the victims of this latter category of philatelic imperialism but if such issues are treated with the contempt they deserve, then an interesting little collection of new issues can be made that still represent this tiny little island nation in The Pacific Ocean. 

 Another Taiwan related issue has appeared recently - on 19 September 2009, another miniature in the usual format was released to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of Taiwan- Tuvalu diplomatic relations. I illustrate this item and the two 2005 issues above.

Problematical new issues 3: Malawi SAPOA & Rotary

I visited the Stafford Stamp Show on 19 June 2010. Unfortunately I found it a most inconvenient and expensive venue to visit given that the exhibition was several miles from Stafford in the countryside and for anyone traveling there by public transport a costly taxi ride was necessary since buses appeared to pass there only every two hours from Stafford Railway Station. However, when I arrived there I found a pleasantly laid out collection of dealers stalls and very few customers so that I generally had the dealers to myself and they had time to chat and help me look for the items I was hoping to buy. I visited Nigel Haworth's stall and with his usual unrivalled offering of Commonwealth stamps and new issues I began to feel that my visit to Stafford was proving to be more useful than I had feared it would be. We chatted about the latest South African Post Office Administrations (SAPOA) joint issue which this time comes from nine of the member states (South Africa, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mauritius, Swaziland, Botswana, Lesotho and Malawi) and which of the issues he so far had in stock (Namibia and Botswana which I had already obtained on my visit to Stamp World 2010 in May) and he reminded me that Malawi has not yet released its previous SAPOA issue, the wild animals set of 2007. This set had long been puzzling me. An illustration of the miniature sheet has been depicted on a birds on stamps website for a long time but I have never seen the item offered by any dealer so I was not sure if it had actually been issued or whether it was so scarce that no one had been able to obtain it to put on sale. It appears that the former is the case; Nigel suggested that the South African printers had not released the set to the Malawi Post Office because of the latter's inability to pay for it. For the present at least I have scrubbed it from my "to get" list of stamps. The illustration of this miniature sheet is illustrated in this blog.

 Another mysterious issue from Malawi is the Rotary miniature sheet released on 25 July 2005. Stanley Gibbons and other catalogues only list the four stamps as being produced in miniature sheet form but purchases of Malawi kiloware I have made in the last few months confirm that each value was also available for use from ordinary sheets of stamps. I have found all four values printed in much lighter shades than those in the miniature sheet and I have seen at least two of the values in se-tenant pairs (clearly not originating from the miniature sheet). All four values of the sheet stamps are illustrated here as well as the miniature sheet for comparison. Again I have not seen any dealer offering the individual stamps for sale in mint or used condition.

 New headaches from Malawi are looming. The SAPOA World Cup set may pose a problem in availability or possibly not since a publicity item from ZimPost announced that all the participating nations had put up 50000 euros to pay for the issue so one supposes that Malawi must have paid its share up front and will therefore have received its supply of its own stamps. Perhaps this will open the way for the 2007 issue to become available to them as well. Additionally a new set of butterfly definitives has been issued in new values and all with "Protect Nature" inscribed on them. I have only seen them offered for sale once so far and that was on E Bay with ludicrously high prices being bid for them. I suspect they will become available from a proper dealer in the foreseeable future at sensible new issue prices. I hope so!

Problematical New Issues 2: Cameroun

After writing the previous blog I was surprised to come across the announcement by CamPost of another issue. If I had been more thoughtful I would have realised that such an issue was likely to be released about now, marking as it does the fiftieth anniversary of the independence of Cameroun and the fiftieth anniversary of the state's reunification with the British Cameroons. This second issue whose date of release is not entirely certain but may be also 10 May 2010 comprises 5 values: a 125F depicting the national flag, a 200f depicting the 50th anniversary logo. a 250F value depicting the national coat of arms, a 550F depicting a portrait of President Biya in black and white and 1000F with the same presidential portrait but in colour. The illustrations show the five values of this set and top and bottom are depicted the stamps which commemorate the "Africa 21" Conference previously reported.

Problematical new issues 1

Two territories which always pose problems whenever they issue new stamps are Cameroun and Mozambique. Cameroun has recently announced one of its very infrequent and usually almost unobtainable new issues which was planned to have been released on 10 May 2010 and which celebrated The Africa Conference, "Africa 21", which was being held in the capital city of Yaounde. The issue comprised of two stamps, values FCFA 125 and FCFA 250, and are said to depict the conference logo, the lower value in black and white and the higher in colour. As Cameroun's football team is also appearing in the World Cup competition in South Africa (but not getting off to a good start after a 1-0 defeat in their first game against Japan), given a number of previous issues have been released to commemorate previous World Cup participation by the Cameroun team, we might also expect to find the Post Office, CamPost, issuing a further set to mark this latest World Cup involvement of the country. No doubt it will be even more difficult to track down and be much sought after by football philatelists and most likely will turn up after some months at the very least, if not years, on E Bay fetching well over $100 for a set and the same again for any associated miniature sheet. We will see.

  Meanwhile, Mozambique has announced its most recent new issue - a set of 3 stamps released on 14 April 2010, all in the same stylised design, marking the 30th anniversary of LAM - the Linhas Aerias de Mocambique - the national airline. Mozambique new issues are usually difficult to track down but are mostly not in the same league of difficulty as those of Cameroun and I often find I can obtain them from the New York dealers, Herricks, a few weeks after the date of issue. In these new issues I do not include the long thematic sets which the Mozambique Post Office officially acknowledges as "issued abroad" which is a bizarre concept that implies that they are not produced for use on mail within Mozambique but as collectibles with postal validity which, no doubt, if you troubled yourself to take to Mozambique with you, you could actually post a letter with one affixed and it would be carried through the mail. Such a series was "The History of Transport", said to have been issued on 30 September 2009, and consisting of an expensive 162 stamps and 27 miniature sheets. I long ago decided that such items would not receive a place in my Commonwealth collection. But a collection of the new issues actually produced for use on real mail in the country makes a fascinating collection and adds a note of exoticism with their inscriptions being entirely in Portuguese rather than English as well as their primitive production and naive designs. Sometimes the most interesting stamps are the ones you have to work hardest to obtain.

New Tonga Surcharges

The main highlight for me when I recently visited the rather quiet, diminutive and expensive-to-travel-to "London 2010 Festival Of Stamps" (why do all these affairs in Britain have to be held in London?) was my visit to the stand of the dealer Steven Zirinsky from New York where I was able to see and purchase some of the latest Tongan surcharges which he had written about in a recent edition of Gibbons Stamp Monthly and which are of more importance to stamp collectors than most other modern philatelic emissions since the Tonga Post Office really does produce them to be used on mail rather than to bleed collectors of money. Unfortunately these items are not sold to collectors so that they are so rare that they are difficult to find and shockingly expensive to buy. But they are REAL postage stamps. In his article, Mr Zirinsky described how Tongan postal rates were increased from 20s to 30s in 2008 and to deal with this three surcharges were produced by hand stamping previous issues. They are exceedingly rare. Two of the items were Niuafo'ou issues of 1998 and although he had one on cover he was not able to put a price to it for the present and the item was not yet for sale. The third handstamp, the 2000 Commonwealth Membership 55s surcharged 30s, was being sold for $700 on cover and I believe he had three different covers for sale. After the handstamps, three machine-printed surcharges have been produced - the first on 21 November 2008 being the 55s depicting Vava'u Port Of Refuge. The illustrations here depict the three machine printed stamps and the Commonwealth 2000 hand-stamped item. Exciting, if expensive, Commonwealth stamp collecting.

British New Issue Nonsense (1); Selective Memory

No-one can doubt that most countries now produce new stamps not because of any postal need nor even to honour someone worthwhile  or commemorate a particularly important national event, but simply to make as much as money as they can get away with without putting off collectors from buying their stamps. The British post office, Royal Mail, long in serious financial difficulties, has for some years now given up any pretense at considering the wishes of their stamp collecting public and issues more and more stamps every year, some of which are not even available at ordinary post offices for the public to buy to use on their mail. In 2008 Royal Mail began a series of issues which on the face of it at least had some historical interest although the issues were only tentatively related to any specific historical anniversaries or commemorations - that of featuring British monarchs although the series started off at an arbitrary date - 1399 - which is when the House Of Lancaster came to power under King Henry IV who had had his predecessor, King Richard II, starved  to death - not a very promising personality to be featured on the first stamp of a long series. 

  The latest series features the first monarchs of the united Great Britain  - the Stuarts - and an accompanying miniature sheet deals with important subjects of the Stuart era - the physician William Harvey who was the first man to describe the circulation of blood, the civil war which was waged throughout the British Isles, the stamp itself featuring Sir Thomas Fairfax who was a leader of the Parliamentary forces, the poet John Milton, and a design related to John Vanbrugh, a dramatist. What the miniature sheet does not depict, however, is rather significant - it does not feature the two rulers of England after the deposition of Charles I after the Civil War - Oliver and Richard Cromwell, who headed the republic that replaced the monarchy for ten years or so. Of this father and son pair, the omission of Oliver Cromwell is the most significant - he is undoubtedly one of the most important figures in British history who had a profound effect on the course of British government but he has never been depicted on a British stamp. Cromwell is notorious in Ireland for the aggressive campaign he waged there during the Civil War and even today he remains a loathsome figure in that part of The British Isles. It is almost certainly for that reason that he has not been featured on a British stamp but his importance to English history means that for the sake of not causing offense to one part of the country, his role in another part can never be commemorated - political correctness taken too far? The omission of this giant of British history makes a nonsense of the British monarchs series particularly when it has featured a collection of murderous monsters already - Richard III, who even his numerous apologists can not deny killed his own nephews to clear his way to the throne as well as probably murdering his brother, his wife and the former feeble-minded King Henry VI. Henry VIII who saw his way to arranging for two of his wives to be beheaded as well as numerous other people - great and humble - who fell victim to his paranoid bloodthirstiness and Mary I who delighted in burning frail, elderly priests at the stake although she never brought herself to go and watch such a horrific event herself. These are just the sort of people who manage to find their way on to stamp designs when a post office is issuing stamps just to make money rather than to commemorate people of national worth.

  And then even if you ignore the monsters, Cromwell's achievements are much more worthy of commemoration than those of poor Queen Jane, a young girl who ruled for just nine days before being deposed and executed by Mary Tudor or Edward V who ruled for a couple of months and then disappeared as the victim of Richard III. The depiction of poor, pious Henry VI, mentioned above, is also questionable since whilst being a founder of admittedly important educational establishments he did manage to lose the crown of France which his father had won for him. In the presence of monsters and nonentities it is disgraceful that Cromwell has not received a philatelic commemoration in his own country - Royal Mail has air-brushed him from history. Perhaps a stamp or stamps could be released but perhaps not in post offices in Northern Ireland to avoid offense there.

African Problems 1 continued

On 1 September 1991 the new Eritrean Postal Administration opened a number of post offices - at Asmara, Assab, Adiquala, Adikeih, Akordat, Barentu, Decemhare, Ghindae, Mendefera, Masawa, Keren, Tessenai and Senafe. and the first postage stamps were issued on the same date. A set of three issued in a quantity of 20000 of each value was released in three colours printed by Adulis Printing Press in Asmara, the Eritrean capital city. The stamps are featured in a catalogue of Eritrean stamps of the period 1991 to 2004 produced by The Philatelic Bureau in Asmara and the illustration (immediately above this text) depicts three very crudely produced stamps with rough irregular perforations. Two other values were also produced later (not mentioned in the Philatelic Bureau catalogue) which included a 5 birr value. These are listed in Stanley Gibbons Catalogue but are unpriced and again very crudely produced on very thin paper, very much resembling the original three values in the quality of the finished product. I have two examples of the 5 birr which while both being alike in design, are printed on different sizes of paper ( see illustration above) so that one of them has much wider borders to the stamp. Last year I obtained a set of the original three stamps from Herrick Stamps in New York (third illustration) but was surprised to find that they vary very considerably from the items depicted in the Eritrean Bureau Catalogue - they are not only redrawn but also much more professionally produced. Early commemorative stamps of Eritrea from 1993 to 1995 were produced by BDT, Enschede and also in Rome and one wonders if the redrawn set originate from any of those printers. I have yet to see a set of those first stamps as illustrated in the Eritrean Philatelic Bureau catalogue but presumably the more primitive versions are those arising from the Asmara printer. It seems to me that there are many questions yet to be answered about this particular stamp issue.

  News of new issues from Eritrea is slow to arrive and only in the last few days have I obtained a stamp I have not previously seen (4th illustration above text) despite having visited Eritrea (including several post offices and the Philatelic Bureau in Asmara) in November 2008. The stamp is valued 70c and depicts Eritrean resistance soldiers with the flag of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front and has a "2008" imprint in the lower border along with the name of the designer, "graphic design by Laine Biala", at the lower right and that of the printer, Joh Enschede, at the lower left. This single value is probably part of a bigger set and I wonder if it commemorates the 30th anniversary of the liberation of the town of Nafka in 1977, a significant event in the Eritrean struggle for freedom. No doubt all will become clear eventually. Although the stamp has a 2008 imprint it may have been issued later than that since, as I say, I did not see it being sold in any outlet as late as November of that year. This particular example looks as though it was postmarked at Keren, one of the post offices I visited, and it was certainly not on sale there when I went.

  Finally I turn my attention to one of the African countries which has come quite latterly to be a member of The Commonwealth - Cameroun (see posting no 1). Information on new issues from there is hard to track down and new issues are extremely infrequent. To the best of my knowledge the most recent issue has been the pair of stamps which commemorated the papal visit to Cameroun which was released on the 17 March 2009. The stamps feature the Pope and President Biya and are tastefully designed and nicely printed by Cartor. The illustration (top of the page) depicts the first day cover from Yaounde.