Nigerian Stamps and Postal History

At the end of my last post, I stated that I would show you some more of the commemorative issues of the 1960's. There are so many issues from this period that I had a hard time deciding which ones to show you. In the end though, I thought it best to go back to the early issues that came out just before Independence, the Independence issue itself, and the first issues after Independence. These issues give a real sense of how much anticipation and hope there was around the time of Independence. It was the culmination of a long and patient struggle that many prominent Nigerians were engaged in. The stamp designs show the collective pride that most Nigerians felt, once they had accomplished their goal. The issues were printed by two firms: Waterlow and Sons, who produced the engraved pre-Independence issues and the Independence issue itself, and Harrison and Sons, who printed all of the issues after Independence. The first of these is the Royal Visit Issue, which appeared on Janu...

As I had promised in my last post, I am going to show you a most extraordinary find that I came upon, entirely by chance in the spring of 2012: The Herbert Macaulay cover, as I call it. The cover is shown in all its glory below: European size Montgomery Ward order envelope sent from Lagos on February 7, 1920 Almost every philatelist who has been around long enough, has either experienced, or heard about the thrill of making a significant philatelic find. These finds can either be very rare examples of otherwise common stamps, or they can be world famous rarities. Usually, there will only be one or two such stories in an entire lifetime of collecting. In this case, this was the third time in my life that I had made such a find. I had briefly outlined in my last post who Herbert Macaulay was, but to recapitulate, he was basically the Nigerian equivalent of Gandhi, or Sir John A Macdonald, for those that want an example closer to home. On June 24, 1923 he for...

The past few posts have concentrated on the definitive issues since World War II, so I thought it was time to show you some of the commemorative issues that appeared in the early years after independence. The issues in this post all appeared between March 8, 1964 and January 1, 1965. All of them, except for the Kennedy memorial issue, and the 3d of the First Anniversary of Republic issue were printed by Harrison and Sons, while the former issue was printed in Israel by two firms: the government printer, which produced the 2/6d and 5/- values, and Lewin-Epstein, which printed the 1/3d value of the Kennedy issue and the 3d of the First Anniversary of the Republic Issue. The first of these was the Nubian Monuments Preservation Issue, designed by M. Shamir, which appeared on March 8, 1964: 6d Yellow olive and emerald - Queen Nefertari 2/6d Brown, deep olive and emerald - Rameses II The Nubian Monuments are part of two large rock temples, called the Abu Simbel templ...

Well February is now upon us and I still haven't posted. The good news is I have started drafting my next post, which from my mouth to God's ears will be posted this weekend. I am working on the 1965-1973 wildlife definitive issue, which is a marvellous set, which rivals many Western definitive sets of the 1960's in terms of its complexity. So please bear with me, and thank you for your continued interest and support.