Nigerian Stamps and Postal History

Before I get into details about the stamps of these issues, I wanted to show you some of the items that have solidified my interest in Nigerian philately. One of the nice things about collecting a country like Nigeria is that  you can collect at a much higher level, for a given outlay of cash, than you can with a more popular country like Great Britain and the USA.  One thing that you won't often see are full sheets. Unlike other populous countries where full sheets for modern issues are still used for postage, full sheets from Nigeria are quite scarce. Part of the reason is that for many sets the print quantity was under 1 million stamps. Given that most sheets are 60 stamps, this means that in many cases there were fewer than 17,000 sheets printed.  The sheets below are especially hard to find. In four years of concentrated collecting, I have only ever come across a handful of these. The 1k Hides and Skins, plate 1B sheet printed in photogravure, ...

I had said in my last post that I am working on a comprehensive study of two sets from Nigeria, of which the Queen Victoria Lagos definitives was one. The second set is  the first definitive set issued after the country switched from sterling currency to the new currency of Naira and Kobo, in 1973. The standard postage stamp catalogues have not given this set a name, but I call it the Industry and National Pride Issue, as it depicts the various industries of Nigeria, and one gets a sense of the immense pride in their country that Nigerians felt a mere 13 years after independence in 1960.  This set proved to be very popular and was in use continuously until it was replaced in 1986. There was a brief period of time during the inflationary period in the early 1990's when most of the values appeared again. Why they appeared during this time is somewhat of a mystery, since the massive inflation, had rendered the denominations unsuitable for all postage rates in effect at the ti...