You’ve all heard of fake news, here’s imaginary countries
There are quite a lot of stamps called “Cinderellas” by collectors - these are stamps not authorized by any national post office in the UPU (Universal Postal Union), or listed in standard catalogues. Some of them are from countries you won’t find in your atlas either.
Previously, articles in this series have mentioned stamps issued in the name of breakaway rebellions by would-be country founders We won’t go into these sad stories again here. What follows seems more fun.
Several small islands belonging to Great Britain have populations too small to justify a post office, and some of them set up a postal service for local use by agreement with the government. The oldest and still the best is the island of Lundy (off Guernsey) which went so far as to invent a currency for the purpose, the “puffin,” pegged at 100 puffin to the British pound. (The plural of puffin is puffin, not puffins, to distinguish it from the birds I suppose.)
The stamps do not bear any name or symbol identifying them as British, but the name of the island is presented as if it were a nation.
They sell far more stamps to tourists than to islanders, of course, a fact not lost on other small islands, some of which are legitimate, but several are just traps for collectors, with no actual service. Some of the names are rather odd, my favourite being “Calf of Man”, off the Isle of Man.
Further afield, we find some stranger cases. The tiny country of East Timor has an enclave called Oecusse (variously spelled) of a few villages on the coast of West Timor, part of Indonesia. A New Zealand anarchist, Bruce Grenville, declared himself the Sultan of Occusse-Ambeno, and put out a series of colourful stamps, probably slightly profitable, celebrating the new “nation.”
The far north of India includes a state called Naga. About 50 years ago as near as I can tell, several series of entirely bogus stamps of “Nagaland” appeared. They are widely believed to be the brainchild of a dealer named Clive Feigenbaum, and were so widely circulated that they routinely show up in local collections. Mr. Feigenbaum was never convicted of anything, but he was expelled from the Philatelic Dealer’s Association.
I am delighted to say that Canada got into the act, too. Well, sort of. Thirty-odd years ago Frank magazine put out several issues of satirical stamps on Canadian subjects. No doubt for legal reasons, the word “Canada” never appears on them, although some names of provinces do. But they never invented a country name.
The mockery was highly political, but very evenhanded - Liberal, Conservative, NDP and Bloc Quebecois politicians all got frequent stamps, and even such small parties as the Natural Law Party came to their attention (if you are old enough, you may remember the TV ads featuring “yogic flying”.) They even went after private individuals who expressed ideas wild enough to make the newspapers - the best of these being the series of “Sniveling Bigots of Our Time.”
The icing on this little cake is that some intrepid souls used the Frank stamps to send letters within Canada, at least forty of which were actually delivered by Canada Post.
So if you see a stamp but don’t recognize the country name, it doesn’t necessarily mean the country exists. Buyer beware.
For more information regarding the Penticton & District Stamp or to donate collections for charity auctions call Harv Baessler at 250-492-4301