Uganda Missionaries

Our next examples are weird in nature and in appearance. The 1895-1899 Uganda Cowries, also known as the Uganda Missionary stamps, were a creation of biblical proportions and came into being when Reverend Ernest Millar, who was as you might expect a missionary in Uganda, and seeing a need for postage stamps, got his typewriter out and armed with some hymn paper, in May 1895, created these primitive effigies.

You’d be forgiven for thinking they can’t be stamps at all and thinking they are crude and inelegant, but today they timelessly evoke the circumstances of their production, as has famously been said about them. Although they are scarce and quite difficult to buy, they are relatively affordable, with the more common example selling for three figures and the rare and unique items fetching five figures. When compared with some of the other primitive world rarities, such as those from British Guiana, Mauritius and the Brazil Bull’s Eyes, these stamps are a very modest collecting area, and interestingly one of the first collectors to pin any importance upon them was Charlotte Tebay (1819-1901), who in 1897 exhibited the Ugandan Cowrie stamps (Cowries being the currency) at the London Philatelic Exhibition. If you consider that these adhesives were still in production and use at the time, Charlotte Tebay displayed an astute philatelic eye to collect these unattractive labels at such a prestigious philatelic exhibition. However, Tebay, was a bit of a trailblazer because she was, in 1876, the first lady to join the Philatelic Society London (now the Royal Philatelic Society London).