I've just been repositioning my collection of mint QE2 BC from its stock-book onto Vario pages - a small change but they are better spaced now. I'm still a long way from writing them up into an album.
However, such diligent tweezer-work gave me time to consider these stamps - almost without exception attractive, well-produced, and designed or engraved by anonymous craftsmen working, I suspect, for British printers in Britain. For whom were they produced? The natives of those countries? The British administration? Or just stamp collectors?
A mixture of the three, no doubt, depending on which part of the BC is concerned. The iconography is always fascinating: picturesque, educational, and gently hinting at the peaceful and progressive benefits of colonial rule (even as such rule was in most places in the process of being dismantled). But I cannot help thinking that many - possibly a majority - of these stamps were issued, as SG delicately puts it, "greatly in excess of true postal needs". Naturally, the places SG gives as examples of this sort of thing are "foreign" places, in the Middle East or Africa, and nowhere near the British Commonwealth (I mean in quality rather than geographically).
But the suspicion lingers. Perhaps a genuine BC collection would show postal (and not philatelic) usage from or within the country concerned. My collection of mint BC stamps is very pretty, but ultimately rather meaningless. For that reason, I think it will probably stay on its Vario pages.
BuckaCover.com - 80,000 covers priced 60c to $1.50 - Easy browsing 300 categories 31 Oct 2015 08:37:07pm
re: British Commonwealth, pre-independence
I agree completely. I had occasion to look up populations of Pacific islands recently, and was quite surprised at the small populations of some of the most prolific issuers.
Here is an edited list from Wikipedia (in graphical form in order to preserve the formatting).
I mean, really, what's the point of collecting all those expensive Wallis and Futuna mint sets? Purely manufactured items to capture foreign revenues for the 15,000 inhabitants. Not to speak of Pitcairn Island!
On the other hand, here is a real item of philatelic history:
Roy
3 Members like this post. Login to Like.
"BuckaCover.com - 80,000 covers priced 60c to $1.50- 10,000+ new covers coming Tuesday June 1"
