Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2021 i Stamp Collector

Stamps of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) have been brought into question due to an ongoing dispute over the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands. According to a report in The Guardian newspaper, the Universal Postal Union (UPU) council has recommended that BIOT stamps no longer be recognised, following a recent ruling that Mauritius has a right to claim the Chagos Islands. The UPU council of administration recommended that its 192 member countries ‘cease the registration, distribution and forwarding of any and all postage stamps issued by the territory formerly known as the “British Indian Ocean Territory”.’ The BIOT Post Office and Philatelic Bureau, which is managed by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the British Government, issued its most recent set of stamps in February featuring images of Sea…

The Summer of Stamps online festival, first held in July 2020 to celebrate the hobby around the world, is set to return for a second year in July. Held at the popular website. www.allaboutstamps.co.uk, the festival will offer special philatelic videos, webinars and articles, in addition to the next All About Stamps Competition. Editor Matt Hill said: ‘The Summer of Stamps came about as a result of the lockdown, we really wanted to organise an event that celebrated stamps and brought collectors together from around the world, giving everyone a focus whilst also catering for newcomers to the hobby. We were blown away by the response and we’re so excited to be running the event again this year and, hopefully, each summer. We’re currently working on the content and can’t…

Fans of stamps and the Beatles will no doubt fondly remember the set issued in 2007 to celebrate the music of, and mania surrounding, the ‘Fab Four’. This latest set has a slightly different feel despite the common theme. This time the album artwork is presented without the previous peculiar perforations and focuses on Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles work as a solo musician. The stamps slot neatly into the ‘Music Giants’ library, with a format already seen in sets for David Bowie and Elton John. So we’re reminded of eight McCartney albums – including Venus and Mars, oddly the only featured LP from McCartney’s band Wings rather than a simple solo effort. Meanwhile the mini sheet shows Paul in the studio across four stamps, reflecting his passion for recording. According to…

Belgium, Letter franked 40c Medaillon from St-Josse-Ten-Noode (Brussels) to Paris SOLD FOR £4,896 China, Chrysanthemums series 1960-1961 MNH SOLD FOR £889 USA, Confederate States 2c Andrew Jackson green (General issues) 1861-1862 MH SOLD FOR £400 Great Britain, Penny Black 1840 plate 2, red Maltese cross cancellation, beautiful margins SOLD FOR £311 France, precancelled 30c orange ‘Semeuse’ overprint. ‘POSTES France 1921’ MNG, rare (signed & cert.) SOLD FOR £2278 Chinese Imperial Post stationnery from Dongguan 1906 to Asslar (Germany) via Guangzhou and Hong Kong SOLD FOR £537 Great Britain, ?1 brown-lilac KV on bluish paper, wmk Maltese Cross, cancelled Manchester 1882 SOLD FOR £364 Monaco, 5f Olympics Helsinki 1952 (modified value) overprinted ‘COLOMBES / 15-5-1960’ for the France Football Championship, unissued MNH (with cert.) SOLD FOR £1682 Denmark, 4s. red-brown 1851-1854…

On the 11 May 1977 four stamps were issued to mark the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, writes Brian Austin, in a similar style to the 1935 Jubilee set issued for King George V. A month later there was a change in postal rates which led to the Post Office issuing an extra 9p value, so leading to a second batch of first day covers, and in some cases the May covers having the extra 9p added to produce a double-dated / postmarked cover. So this month’s cover has a circular date stamp (CDS) postmark, in other words that is the postmark that would be used in your local area and is usually obtained by visiting the local post office in person. After some research a clever dealer found…

Presentation packs are only re-printed on rare occasions, writes Stuart Leigh, but to the eagleeyed collector, there have been examples when the reprint wasn’t simply an exact copy of the original. On 21 May 2012, Pack Ref. P&G 8 was issued with a single 1st Class Union Flag stamp with the datastring 002012 05-51840-07 it was subsequently re-printed and found in circulation in January 2015. However, closer examination of the font suggests a change was made. On the first printing ‘1st Class’ is approximately 18mm long, whereas on the later printing it is about 16mm long. On the later printing the ‘up to 100g’ is not inset and the zeros in the ‘100’ are more rounded. The datastring is virtually the same length but on the original it is slightly…

1 When was The Society For The Suppression Of Speculative Stamps formed? 2 Why was the colour of the GB QEII 2d red-brown of 1955 altered to light red-brown? 3 Which two of the four stamps in the GB 1955 Castles set have a stretch of water in the vignette scene? 4 In which year was the first GB ?1 postage stamps issued, and what was its colour? 5 What were the two values and colours of the GB Festival of Britain stamps of 1951 (pictured, right in black and white!)? 6 In which year was Sudan’s Arab Postman stamp first issued? 7 Four portraits feature on the St Helena 10s postage stamp of 1934 (right). Who are they? 8 In which two years were the British Empire Exhibition postage…

The third All About Stamps competition focussed on modern stamps, challenging collectors to present a one-page story or article using only stamps issued during or after the year 2000. Once again we have been impressed by the entries which have come from all over the world, and we're pleased to present some of the highlights here. You can view all of the entries over on the website (just visit: www.allaboutstamps.co.uk/virtual-events/stamp-displays) and we'll reveal the winner in the next issue of the magazine. Regular readers will know the All About Stamps Competition was launched back in July 2020 and thanks to the popularity of the project, we're now running the competition once a quarter, giving you four chance to win each year. Watch this space for details of our next competition…

Germany issued a self-adhesive booklet of ten stamps in 2010. Each stamp, sold at a premium to raise money for welfare charities, had a strawberry design, with micro-encapsulated essential oils embedded in the stamp paper. The fruity smell was released when the strawberry was rubbed. Other stamps in the set were infused with the scents of apples, lemons and blueberries!…

It’s fair to say many of the unwritten rules around stamp issues have been relaxed in recent decades. The very idea of philatelically honouring a living person was frowned upon for years, but then in 2005 Royal Mail issued stamps showing the (alive and well) England cricket team celebrating their Ashes victory (actually a few living people had popped up on our stamps before then, albeit a little less obviously). Since then there has been a swathe of living Britons on our stamps, including the recently issued Paul McCartney designs detailed in this issue. This approach might not sit comfortably with the more traditional collector, but isn’t it right to honour people whilst they’re still with us rather than having to wait and give them a posthomous tribute? Following the…

The Lundy Field Society has celebrated its 75th anniversary with the release of six new Lundy stamps, in denominations of 175, 90 and 65 ‘puffins’. The new stamps do not officially pay for postage but follow a long tradition of stamps being issued on the island in the Bristol Channel, as detailed in our special feature on page 58 of this issue. The stamps show the former owner of Lundy, MC Harman, and lecturer in zoology Leslie Harvey on the 175 puffin values; diving is depicted on the two 90 puffin values, following the island being designated a Marine Conservation Zone; and the final two stamps show visitors on the island. You can buy sets of the stamps and first day covers by visiting Lundy, or you can order them…

The Postal Museum has resumed the operation of its two Post & Go machines at the Museum, as the London attraction re-opens to the public. Both kiosks will be in their usual locations The Postal Museum’s Welcome Space and Mail Rail entrance; no admission ticket will be required to access the services. Additional safety measures are being introduced such as a hand sanitizer station, a queuing system and information on how to scan the NHS Test and Trace QR code located near the machines. The machine in the Welcome Space will vend a collector’s strip of 1st and 2nd class Machin stamps with an overprint ‘Wish You Were Here’ and a distinctive postcard symbol celebrating The Postal Museum’s new exhibition marking 151 years of the British postcard. In addition to…

Six new stamps and a mini sheet from Jersey explore aspects of 1990s pop culture. The 1990s was an eclectic decade, perhaps most notably on the music scene, which saw the rise of ‘Brit-pop’, boy bands, the emergence of Grunge bands such as Nirvana, and the Spice Girls who burst into the charts championing girl power. In fashion, crop tops and combat trousers became wardrobe staples and ‘The Rachel’ was the must-have haircut, thanks American sitcom Friends. In technology, home computers and the internet were gaining momentum, DVDs were replacing VHS and Encarta took the place of the Encyclopaedia Britannica as the ‘go to’ for tricky homework. Popular Culture in Jersey, as across the rest of the world, was changing too. Post-war Jersey was famed for its nightlife and in…

This year’s common Europa theme is ‘Endangered animal and bird species’, and two Faroese stamps depict the Puffin which is, sadly, threatened. The puffin with its large colourful beak and orange leg is an iconic bird of the Faroe Islands. Those who travel to the Faroe Islands in the summer expect to see the birds in large numbers, but as the philatelic bureau team point out, many will be disappointed, since the stock has declined substantially in recent decades. In 2017, the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) added the puffin to the Red List of endangered bird species. But you may be surprised to learn that the capture of puffins is not the main reason for their decline. It seems that climate change has a major impact on…

Between 1455 and 1487, England was torn apart by a series of violent struggles for the throne. The period witnessed the deposition of three kings, and the violent death of two of them, in a series of bloody battles known as the Wars of the Roses, fought between the houses of Lancaster and York It might not seem like the most poignant time to recall this chapter in our history – how many other stamp issues have marked a 550th anniversary? – but there is no denying the significance and drama of the War of the Roses, which are brought to life on these stamps by medieval and military artist Graham Turner. Royal Mail also worked with writer, historian and researcher Dr David Grummitt on the stamp issue. David Gold,…

Can you recall the nail-biting weeks of April, May and June 1982 when Margaret Thatcher sent a combined military force on an 8,000-mile expedition to recover the Falkland Islands and its captive ex-pat British population from Argentina? Our Army, Navy and Air Force emerged bloodied but victorious. Meanwhile, at home we tucked in to our breakfast tea and toast and read the stories recounted in our morning tabloids beneath sensational headlines such as ‘Gotcha!’, ‘Argy Bargy’ and ‘Yomp to Port Stanley’. Now let us look back to a similar, though less well documented incident on the Falkland Islands 150 years earlier, in 1833. The words of a contemporary British newspaper give an account of it in the mode sedate language of that age: Saint James’s Chronicle, April 1833 The Sarandi, an…

In 1967, Bell Burnell was involved with the construction of the Interplanetary Scintillation Array – a radio telescope-with the purpose of studying quasars. She is most well known for her discovery of the first radio pulsars in the same year when she was a post graduate student at the University of Cambridge. Controversy surrounded the discovery of pulsars when in 1974 the Nobel Prize for Physics was jointly awarded to her supervisor Anthony Hewish and radio astronomer, Martin Ryle. Sir Fred Hoyle was outraged by Bell Burnell’s omission and accused Hewish of stealing the prize. Bell Burnell has had an extensive career working at the University of Southampton, the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh and in 1986 she was the Project Manager for the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawai’i. She…

The most obvious stamps related to malaria are likely those issued during the United Nations sponsored malaria eradication campaign of the early 1960s. Many collectors assemble these issues in attractive collections featuring stamps from somewhere in the neighbourhood of 125 countries. A slightly broader collection would include a number of slogan meters, slogan cancels, and slogan hand stamps used during the same campaign period. Going even broader, a collection might boast privately produced stamps and labels. These groups of philatelic material represent the most common content of a typical malaria collection, but a plethora of additional material is available to those who would go a bit deeper and broader into pursuing malaria philately. Sticking with the campaign issues of the 1960s, a collector might care to seek some typical printing…

Devlan Kruck is a professional philatelist and philatelic journalist, currently working for the Swiss-based International Auctioneers David Feldman SA. He is a member of the Great Britain Philatelic Society (GBPS) and the Cambridge Philatelic Society. Devlan examines another philatelic treasure on page 32. Paula Hammond has worked as a publisher, copy-writer, ghost-writer, author, and journalist. She’s written over thirty fiction and non-fiction books as well as comics, poetry, and scripts for DVDs and CD-ROMS. Paula writes our A to Z of Thematics article on page 72. We’re always delighted to feature readers in the magazine alongside our regular experts and this month we feature highlights of the recent All About Stamps Competition. With a theme of ‘Modern Stamps’, the entries covered subjects as diverse as the Olympics to Petroleum, Girlguiding…

Royal Mail are set to issue four new stamps in memory of HRH The Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, this month, following his passing in April. The black and white images on the four stamps feature Prince Philip through the years. The 2nd class stamp shows Prince Philip taken by the photographer Baron; the 1st class shows the Duke of Edinburgh attending the passing out parade of Prince Andrew at Dartmouth Naval College, Devon; the ?1.70 value shows Prince Philip at the Royal Windsor Horse Show; and the final value (?2.55) shows a photograph of Prince Philip taken by the Terry O’Neill. Simon Thompson, CEO, Royal Mail said: ‘Throughout adulthood, The Duke of Edinburgh dedicated himself to the service of this country, the Commonwealth and to the many causes he…

A block of three stamps from Liechtenstein celebrate the centenary of PEN International, one of the world’s best-known association of writers, and an upholder and enforcer of the right to freedom of expression. Since its inception after the First World War, PEN centres have been established in more than one hundred countries around the world, including Liechtenstein in 1978. The association takes a public stand against repression, censorship, imprisonment and assassination of writers and publicists, and it is this work which is reflected in the innovative stamps. Philately Liechtenstein chose quotes from Friedrich Schiller (CHF 1.00), Emily Dickinson (CHF 1.50) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (CHF 3.80) with certain words being blacked out, using ‘scratch-off black coating’. In this way, the philatelic bureau explained, the stamps draw attention to the…

Guernsey Post have released stamps to mark the tenth anniversary of Sark being designated the world’s first Dark Sky Island by the International Dark Sky Association (IDA). The IDA works to protect the night skies from light pollution for present and future generations and to date has designated 170 International Dark Sky Places, protecting over 110,000sq km of dark skies around the globe. Bridget Yabsley, head of philatelic at Guernsey Post said: ‘With no public street lighting, paved roads and cars, the beautiful island of Sark does not suffer from the effects of light pollution and its night sky is very dark, with meteors and countless stars on display. Since 2015, star gazers from all around the world have visited the observatory of the Sark Astronomy Society (SAstroS), which is…

AUCTION HIGHLIGHTS Spink’s recent Important Stamps and Covers of the World sale featured a range of New South Wales stamps, including this 2d pale blue from the 1854-63 Diadem Issue, which is only one of two examples recorded imperforate, the other being in the Royal Philatelic Collection. With watermark ‘1’, and mainly good to large margins, the stamp was described as being ‘extremely rare’ and it was noted that ‘the first report of this error was in the London Philatelist in May 1892 by M.P. Castle, the famous London collector. His example was bought by King George V in 1929 and is now in the Royal Collection.’ SOLD FOR £4,200 Modern commemorative errors are not currently at their highest levels according to Grosvenor Philatelic Auctions, who have a long tradition…

I’m always on the lookout for postcards related to the collecting of stamps, postcards and postal history as they shed light on how our hobbies used to be, writes Richard Stenlake. This Stanley Gibbons postcard featuring their shop at 391 Strand probably dates from the 1950s or early 1960s. The outside of the shop looks like it had barely changed since it opened in 1893 and the interior, with its long counter and bar stools for the customers, has the feel of an old pub. Today’s stamp shops and shows are principally the domain of the silver fox and the occasional silver vixen, but Gibbons seems to have had a younger clientele and with more ladies both serving and buying. The female staff are all in uniform and the lady…

Mongolia and Genghis Khan are intrinsically intertwined. Genghis Khan invokes the memory of the world’s largest ever Empire, along with the obvious Mongol invasions and conquerings, which sadly conjures up visions of large-scale massacres of civilian populations throughout Asia and Europe. It’s a fact that Genghis Khan’s brutality left millions of people dead in his reign of terror which stretched from 1206 to 1227. Even in death his brutality reached out from the grave, because everyone who attended his funeral, or indeed happened to be passing by at the time, were slaughtered to ensure the location of his grave site was kept a secret. You have to admit that arranging the murder of your funeral guests takes brutality to the next level. But that was all a long time ago…

There was a time when privately operated airlines offered to speed up the delivery of mail in the UK, writes Christer Brunstrom. Provincial Airways Ltd., a company based at Croydon Airport, was established in 1933 to carry freight, passengers and mail from the London area to Plymouth with a stop at Southampton. On 25 November 1933, a 3d airmail label was issued to be used on letters carried by the company in addition to the regular British postage. The stamp was printed in small vertical sheets of four. There were four printings of 2,500 each which very possibly explains the slight variations of the blue and yellow colours. There were only two flights carrying mail using a De Havilland Fox Moth biplane passenger aircraft. It’s likely that most of the…

My home town boasted a full-time stamp shop in the 1950s. Its owner-dealer competed with two market-day stall holders who sold stamps alongside their military badges and Dinky Toys stocks on Wednesdays. Schoolboys from all over town flocked to their stalls during school lunch breaks, and some hung around up to the 7pm market closure on Wednesday evenings. A wider range of philatelic material on offer at the shop drew adult collectors from even further afield, and I occasionally managed to persuade an older collector cousin to let me join him on a shop visit whenever a birthday, or a generous aunt, enhanced my pocket-money spending power. One of those special days came around a few weeks after the death of King George VI in February 1952. Despite a lapse…

Traditionally, drilling onshore was carried out from wooden drilling derricks. After any initial production surge subsides, pump jacks are required to extract the remainder of the producible oil. Offshore, a production vessel can produce and process oil from many wells. It can be linked by swivel to a direct pipeline to shore. Production can be stored in tanks before being shipped by tanker or by tank cars to its destination. OPEC works to stabilize the oil markets to ensure a regular supply of petroleum to consumers and a regular income to the producers. The OPEC Fund was created to support poorer nations. Seismic surveys produced by seismic vessels, are used to locate the best areas for drilling, allowing maps of the new oil or gas field to be produced. To…

The 2020 Summer Olympic Games - “Tokyo 2020” are officially know as the Games of the XXXII Olympiad. It is an international multi-sport event to be held in Tokyo, Japan and was to take place between the 24th July and the 9th August 2020 Tokyo was selected as the host city at the International Olympic Committee (I.O.C.) meeting in Argentina on the 7th September 2013. This is the second time that Japan has hosted the Summer Olympics, the first was in 1964, making it the first city in Asia to host the summer Games twice. These Games will see the introduction of new competitions at the Summer Olympics, including 3x3 basketball, freestyle BMX and Madison cycling, as well as further mixed events. Under new I.O.C. policies that allow the host…