Friday 27 December 2019

Guinea-Bissau Small Birds, 1996

A correspondent found a set of 4 stamps and souvenir sheet apparently issued by Guinea-Bissau in 1996 which is not listed on my site, nor on Kjell Scharning's. He informed me that the MICHEL catalogue lists it as No. 1243-1246 and MS 299 (containing MICHEL No. 1247). Stanley Gibbons online catalogue does not list any issue for this country for 1996. I found an Ebay sale with the souvenir sheet, but at US$99, I considered it too expensive!

The species featuring in this issue are not named on the stamps, but appear to be Cardinal Woodpecker, Crimson SeedcrackerPied KingfisherRed-fronted Parrot and Village Weaver. Any help with Guinea-Bissau 1996 identifying these birds or any information about the issue would be most welcome.

UPDATE Tino Mischler has identified the red bird as Crimson Seedcracker. As most of the birds occur in Guinea-Bissau, I will list them, but probably not collect them. Why are they so expensive?

Friday 20 December 2019

PCi's Birds of the World series

Commonwealth Stamps Opinion has published details of several issues on the theme "birds of the world" issued in the name of various territories that are under Philatelic Collector Inc.'s "umbrella". I could not find these issues on the PCi website, but I am sure they will appear in due course. A second lot of images show the full extent of this unnecessary deluge. I do not intend to list these, and I would be very surprised if any are relevant to my collection. If one searches on https://www.delcampe.net/ for "Exclusive birds 2019" there are currently over 70 hits, though some are duplicated.

Tuesday 17 December 2019

Latvia stamp we missed or ignored

In 1998, Latvia issued a single stamp to commemorate the 70th Anniversary of First Latvian Stamp. The first stamp is surrounded by faded images of more recent stamps which includes on the left side a stamp issued in 1995 featuring White-backed Woodpecker (Dendrocopos leucotos).

Also, one of the Coat of Arms series issued in 1995 and again in 1996 featuring the Arms of Grobina features a stylised Common Crane (Grus grus), but it is too stylised for me.