It’s time to open the final pack of topical stamps I bought about six months ago. This time, the theme was insects.
The pack contained 100 stamps from about a dozen countries, and as with previous packs I’ve shown here most of them were CTO stamps that were likely never (intended to be) used for postage.
The stamps feature a wide range of insects, although most of them are beetles or bees. I imagine that most countries only depict native insects, but then given the nature of CTOs I suppose they could depict anything!
The usual suspects include this selection from North Korea…
This sheet from Equatorial Guinea (which apparently didn’t even have a postal service when these stamps were issues on their behalf!)…
And these Cuban stamps, which were amongst the nicest of the selection (and only some of the many Cuban stamps in the envelope).
The most common topic by far was bees, and every country represented had at least one new stamp. I expect a collector could put together a nice collection focusing just on bees!
As handsome as many of these stamps are, it’s one against disappointing that there wasn’t even a single used stamp in this set. Insect stamps are commonly issued by almost every country, and you’d think topical collections could easily include a few actual used stamps.
I may have mentioned in a previous post but when I made this purchase one of my choices (cats) was not in stock so they made a substitution and as an apology included an envelope of Disney stamps. I won’t feature them on this blog since they are frankly awful (and all issued by only two countries). I’ll probably just send them to Bernard for a Christmas gift or something…
Disney stamps, no. 😛
Next visit, remind me that I want to see your stamp collection.