This interesting piece, issued by Gabon in 1968, is highly unusual.

The Europa, or CEPT emblem, from 1967, appearss on this souvenir sheet, released to honor West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.  This emblem is rarely seen on stamps from countries which are not Europa members.

When the first Europa stamps with a common design were released in 1956, there were six member nations participating in the stamp program; Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.

By 1967, there were 18 nations issuing Europa stamps.

This Gabon stamp was not the only stamp from Gabon issued to honor the former West German Chancellor.  Adenauer appeared on another Gabon stamp issued in 1987.

Gabon was never a German colony.  Originally part of French West Africa, it was aligned with the French Congo in 1886, was granted colonial autonomy by the French in 1904, and then became part of French Equatorial Africa in 1934.  Gabon shed its colonial status and became an independent republic in 1958.

It’s one of the charming curiosities, one of those quirks captured in the pages of the Scott Stamp Catalogue.  One stamp is assigned the number 657 and the next number is 804.

Each stamp was released in 1959.

So what happened to the 146 stamps in between?

The country in question is a country that has had an unfair share of philatelic problems… problems that always make things interesting for collectors.

In 1959, the Philippines released three sets of stamps depicting city and provincial seals.  These sets were heralded as the first of an extensive coat of arms series, similar to the 200+ coat of arms airmails issued by Venezuela in the 1950s.

The editors at Scott reserved catalogue numbers for the Philippines stamps.

But the stamps were never released.  The projected coat of arms issue began and ended with just these three sets.

So what else has gone astray with Philippines stamps?  Quite a bit.  Perhaps the most notable miscue took place in 1932.  We can credit the great stamp writer Ernest Kehr for catching this.

The Philippines released a stamp showing a waterfall.  It was labeled “Pagsanjan Falls” which are in Luzon.  Kehr thought the waterfall looked like the Vernal Falls in California’s Yosemite National Park.  An investigation revealed that Kehr was correct.

And there is this unusual souvenir sheet.

Unusual, because it is both a surcharge and an overprint.  The surcharge changes the rate, and the overprint changes the intended topic.  In this case, four separate rates had to be changed.

Not so unusual, but noteworthy, is that the perforations you see in this image are not actually perforations, but artwork.  These souvenir sheets sat around for 11 years before they were surcharged, overprinted, and released in 1976.

As unusual as this souvenir sheet is, it is not an expensive item.  I keep it in stock in my online stamp store if you would like to add this interesting souvenir sheet to your collection.

It was issued as an overprint and surcharge to commemorate the United States Bicentennial in 1976.  The original souvenir sheet, issued in the fall of 1965, commemorated 400 years of Christianity in the Philippines.

Laos stamps managed to hold up well through more than twenty years of war.  But by the end of 1975, when the Pathet Lao had finally overthrown the monarchy of King  Savang Vatthana, the philatelic glory days were over.

These are the last stamps issued by the Kingdom of Laos, an imperf set from the UNESCO issue of August, 1975.

The stamps of Laos released in the 1950s through the mid 1970s were among the world’s best for that era.  Produced in Paris, many were engraved by masters of the day such as Roger Fennetaux, Andre Freres, and Jean Pheulpin.

Are you interested in the stamps of Laos?  I try to keep a good stock… see what’s available in my online store.

Romania issued this stamp on April 26, 1946 to honor one of its most beloved citizens, Georges Enescu.

Georges Enescu was not just Romania’s most accomplished violinist.  He was a symbol of the nation’s pride, perhaps the best known Romanian of his era.

He was a prodigy, studied in Vienna, and made his U.S. debut in 1923 conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra at New York City’s Carnegie Hall.  The village where he was born was renamed in his honor, and in Bucharest, the mansion where he lived in the late 1930s and early 1940s, is now the Georges Enescu Museum.

When this stamp was released, Enescu was living in Paris.  The Soviets, who had occupied Romania by force since the autumn of 1944, understood his propaganda value.

We don’t know if the stamp was issued as a means to appeal to Enescu’s national pride and cajole his return to Romania, given his distaste for the Soviet occupiers, or if it was to suggest to skeptical Romanian citizens that Enescu was aligned with the new military regime.

In any event, Enescu did not return to Romania, and stayed in Paris until his death in 1955.  He is buried in the city’s celebrated Pere Lachaise cemetery with other musicians ranging from Frederic Chopin to Jim Morrison.

Take a close look at this Romania stamp honoring Georges Enescu and you will notice at least two strange aspects.

First, the name Enescu does not appear on this stamp.  The design does not reveal that Enescu is a musician.  No violin, no sheet music.

Second, this stamp was printed tete-beche.  Notice how alternating stamps are inverted.

I try to keep a supply of this fascinating stamp in my online stamp store.  Take a look if you would like to add this interesting piece to your collection.

Stamps from French Polynesia have enchanted stamp collectors for years.  This one from 1985 does as good a job as any at capturing why these stamps are so appealing to collectors… the wonderful topics French Polynesia’s stamps portray.

Take a look at this stamp.  Topical stamp collectors who have a place in their collection for a roasted pig can’t do much better than this.

French Polynesia releases all sorts of interesting stamps for topical collectors… from surfboards to ships, flip flops to flowers, art to architecture, there is a fascinating variety.

French Polynesia first issued stamps in 1892.  They were part of the French Navigation and Commerce or Sage issue.  In those days, the official name of the South Pacific islands was Etablissements de L’Oceanie.  This changed to Polynesie Francaise in 1955.

French Polynesia has been one of the French Colonies to release stamps that were part of the great omnibus issues…

• 1931 Colonial Exposition

• 1937 Paris International Exposition

• 1937 Colonial Arts Exhibition

• 1939 New York World’s Fair

French Polynesia airmail stamps first appeared in 1935.  More than 200 were released until the last airmail stamps were issued in 1987.

One set of airmail stamps was never sold in the post office of Papeete or anywhere else in French Polynesia.  It was produced by the Vichy government in France in 1944, and showed a beach scene.

I try to keep a good stock of French Polynesia in my online stamp store. So please visit my store to see if there is something for your collection.  It’s one of my favorite countries.

Czeslaw Slania is widely acclaimed as the greatest engraver of postage stamps of  our generation.

When he died in 2005 at the age of 84, the prolific native of Poland who took up residence in Sweden in 1956 had engraved more than a thousand stamps.

As a young man, Slania employed his considerable skills forging documents for the Polish Resistance during World War II.

In his final years, acclaimed as Sweden’s Royal Court engraver and a Commander of the Order of Poland, he remained active and engaged in his work.  His final engraved stamp was released in the year of his death by the United Nations.

But the spectacular work of Czeslaw Slania was not without its occasional imperfection.

During the 1980s, Monaco issued a series of stamps depicting Prince Rainier, engravings by Slania, who was a personal favorite engraver of the stamp collecting Prince.

One of the engravings had to be touched up.  Take a look at the stamps below, pay close attention to the medals on the Prince’s uniform, and you will notice that in the top stamp, the vertical lines of the lower medal have been considerably strengthened.

Over the course of his career, Czeslaw Slania engraved stamps for countries such as Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Denmark, England, Estonia, Faroes, France, Germany, Greenland, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Jamaica, Kazakhistan, Latvia, Lithuania, Monaco, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, San Marino, Sweden, the United Nations and the United States.

On a January day in 1929, and we’re not 100% certain exactly which day it was, Canada released  this 50 cent stamp depicting the schooner Bluenose.

When the stamp was placed on sale, either on January 6 or January 8th, it was immediately acknowledged as extraordinary.

It is not hard to find a stamp collector who considers this the most beautiful stamp any nation has ever produced.

A story surrounds this stunning stamp that may or may not be true… I have not been able to verify it.

Look closely at the schooner to the left.  It may not be a different vessel.  It may actually be Bluenose.  The design of the stamp could be a composite of two images taken by the Nova Scotian photographer W.R. MacAskill.

Another noteworthy piece of information…  The first plate produced for printing  Bluenose was flawed.  Just 200 copies of the stamp were printed from this plate.  The stamps were apparently destroyed, as was the plate.

Plates two and three produced 1.04 million copies of the stamp.  Engraving was done by the American Bank Note Company in New York and printing by the Canadian Bank Note Company in Ottawa.

Imperfs also of this King George V scroll issue classic also exist.

The working Grand Banks schooner itself remains a revered icon of Canada.  No American schooner could beat it other than Gertrude Thibault, which captured the Sir Thomas Lipton International Fishing Challenge Cup in 1930.

After that, Bluenose never lost a race.  Under 10,000 square feet of sail she hit speeds of 17 knots.

When she was at work fishing, she set records.  Twice she brought in the season’s largest catch to her home port of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.  Often derided by competitors as a vessel built purely for racing, she more than earned her stripes as a working schooner.

Launched in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia in 1921, Bluenose foundered on a reef off Haiti and was lost in January, 1946.

Here is one of many reminders that fascinating postal history for stamp collectors continues to be created every day.

In 1961 Colombia released a set of stamps to honor a nurse who died in the autumn floods of 1955.

These were not semi-postals, but postal tax stamps.  And in this case, the tax was mandatory.

All mail in Colombia was supposed to include these stamps during the month of November, 1961.  They depicted a Red Cross nurse, Manuelita de la Cruz, who lost her life while helping flood victims.

Colombia issued its first Red Cross postal tax stamp in 1935. The practice came to an end in 1965.

Nepal has been issuing stamps since 1881, although its stamps were only valid for postage within Nepal and neighboring India until 1959.  Three years before this, Nepal released a set of stamps to commemorate the coronation of its King and Queen.

The set is curious because King Mahendra had a new bride for the coronation.  Queen Ratna was actually the sister of the king’s first wife, who died two years previously.

Four years later, after the King of Nepal visited Elvis Presely in 1960, King Mahendra suspended the Nepal constitution and dissolved the nation’s parliament.

Here are Nepal’s King and Queen on the set with Elvis in Los Angeles.  Their Southern California trip also featured visits  to Disneyland and a refinery in El Segundo.

Nepal has always been a bit of a challenging country for stamp collectors.  Although often considered aligned with India, it is not strictly considered a British Commonwealth country.  When Nepal launched its telegraph service in 1917, postage stamps were used to pay the fees, and, as a result, the cancellations which indicate postal use can be confusing.

In January, 1972, King Mahendra died a strange death.  Only 52 years old, he was big game hunting in southern Nepal with hotelier and CIA operative John Coapman.  Nine years previously, the King had granted permission to Coapman to operate a game hunting lodge in Nepal’s Royal Chitwan National Park.  For intelligence gathering purposes, the location provided an ideal vantage point on both China and India.

While hunting, the King died in Coapman’s arms.

The stamp that commemorates his life and notes his death was not released until December.  At the time of this posting, Queen Ratna is still alive.

I try to keep a stock of Nepal stamps in my store… because of the growing demand for the stamps of this unusual country, many of the singles and sets can be hard be hard to find.