Nigerian Stamps and Postal History

In my last post, I discussed how I came to decide to collect Nigeria. Now I want to talk a little bit about how several factors influence the scarcity of Nigerian stamps and postal history. In addition to the numbers printed, there are other factors that greatly contribute to the scarcity of a particular stamp issue, or item of postal history. Such factors include: 1. Whether or not a strong local collector base exists for the material at the time of issue. 2. What the climactic and other conditions are affecting the storage and preservation of the material are. 3. What local attitudes towards the preservation of historic artifacts are, at the time of issue. 4. What the retention habits are for commercial documents and correspondence. I will discuss how each of these factors appears to play out and affect the scarcity of Nigerian Stamps and postal history and contrast it to the manner in which those factors affect the scarcity of material in North American and European countri...

In my last post I discussed the relative scarcity of selected Nigerian stamps from the pre-1914 period. But I did not discuss the scarcity of Nigerian stamps and postal history in general. What I would like to do now is to address the general scarcity of Nigeria and then to talk about overall trends affecting the scarcity of certain issues or collecting fields. To illustrate the relative scarcity of Nigerian stamps, I would like to tell the story of how I came to choose this country. It was 2008 and I had just sold my Canada collection. I had been yearning to find an area which was rich in varieties and could offer lots of scope for the specialist, but not be so overwhelming as to be unmanageable. I wanted the material from the area to be genuinely scarce, and not merely expensive due to popularity, and yet affordable. Above all, I wanted to choose an area that had future growth potential - one in which the possibility of expansion in demand was possible, but by no means certain. I w...

It feels like it has been months since my last post. I have been taking a break from posting in order to concentrate on sorting out my stamps and organizing them into some kind of order. I have been trying to sort the multiple copies that I have of most issues into different printings, papers, shades, perforation types, and so on. As part of my study, I have sought out and acquired the only literature that I can find on the subject, which has turned out to be a few journal articles, written by my fellow study circle members. In the process of reading these articles, I have come across data regarding the issue quantities of many of Nigeria's classic stamps that illustrates why this country has so much upward potential to philatelists looking to get into a collecting area that simultaneously offers breadth, depth and scarcity. For example, most of the stamps issued prior to 1914 were printed in quantities of less than 50,000 for each stamp, with the 10/- purple brown Queen Victoria...

After almost 2 months spent moving house again and doing everything but working on my stamps, I have finally found the time to begin posting the first part of my London postal history exhibit.  Group 1 – Covers 1-6 Lagos Covers – Universal Postal Union Rates – 1888-1903 The first six covers in the exhibit are examples of single rate letters, sent when the postal rates were regulated by the Universal Postal Union (UPU). The UPU rates came into effect on April 1, 1879. For just over 13 years, the single letter rate was 4d per half ounce. The first two covers both illustrate this rate, and were sent from Lagos to Germany on March 5, 1888 and from Lagos to Berne, Switzerland March 18, 1891. These covers also illustrate representative cross section of nearly all of the Lagos markings that were in use during the period from 1888 to 1903: from Proud type K3, K4, and K5 barred ovals, to D8, D10 and D13 CDS cancels, to R5 Registration markings.  11.    ...

Again, another month has just flown by with no posts. The reason for this is that I have been working frantically to get my 12 frame exhibit of postal history ready for the West Africa Study Circle Meeting in London tomorrow. I committed to give this presentation just over a year ago. Back then the plan was to go to the UK for a week. But my life turned upside down this year, and I used all my vacation time. So I'm going to London for 1 day!! I know, it sounds crazy, but I just had to make good on my commitment. Why am I telling you all this? Because I want to share with you the experiencing of preparing a philatelic exhibit. I have been a philatelist for 36 years now. In that time I have only exhibited once - when I was 12. Back then I knew nothing about exhibiting, and I just threw together all my cheap Canadian stamps on to home-made album pages and sent it in. My exhibit was so bad, it got only a 'merit' for participation. In the intervening years, I have seen many ex...

I am long overdue for another post. Gosh how time flies! It is hard for me to believe that nearly two months has flown by since I wrote my last post. I have, as I write now selected all the covers that I wish to include in my exhibit at the upcoming West Africa Study Circle meeting in London. I have selected 207 covers from Lagos, all the way through a strong showing of the 1973-1986 definitive issue. This selection  includes nearly all of the covers that I have presented in previous posts, plus all the best covers from my collection. In selecting them I have focused on exotic destinations, and multi-stamp frankings, as well as famous recipients and postage due covers.  The covers that are the subject of this post, are a small batch that I have acquired over the past few months from various sources and with one exception, all are from Southern Nigeria. However, the first cover is from Nigeria, featuring the common 1d stamp from the 1921-1936 Script Watermark Issue: ...

I am going to veer off the topic of the last couple of posts and show you another aspect of Nigerian philately that is particularly satisfying over the longer term: the collecting of plate blocks. Plate blocks for the colonies of the British Empire is not a prominent field largely due to the fact that the blocks are very scarce and because the standard catalogues do not list them - so collectors do not know what exists. Because of this, it is possible to obtain some very scarce material for a fraction of what they should be worth based on their scarcity. As an example, I illustrate a 1/- orange Queen Victoria, crown CA plate block that I acquired several months ago on e-bay: This stamp was issued in 1885 and represents the highest of what at the time were low-value definitives. So in North American terms, this would be the equivalent of a 10 cent stamp from that period. I have not seen any data on what the issue quantity was, but I do know from a German publication that the prin...