Georgia’s diplomatic relations – 30 years

Georgia issued already stamps at the occasion of the 30th anniversary of its diplomatic relationship with different countries, first on December 7, 2022 with Azerbaijan, then on December 20, 2022, with Israel.

More recently, we learned from Kenneth Sequeira (Singapore) and Enzo Cafaro (Italy) that Georgia issued also one stamp identical to the Italy stamp itself issued on December 7, 2022. Date of issue of the Georgian stamp is apparently December 27, 2022, leading to a Concerted issue [C]. The only problem here is that despite the fact that the stamps are identical, Italian Post does not consider this issue as joint (???), at least it was not defined originally by an official decree. Fabio Bonacina (Italy) in Vaccari News, tries to give some explanations (https://www.vaccarinews.it/news/Dentello_pure_da_Tbilisi/33994). It is possible that Georgia produced their stamp on the basis of the Italian model once the Italian stamp was released, but up to the point to officially present pictures of both stamps, in a same room, on December 27, in presence of the Italian ambassador. In our case, it is clear that with such a similar design, the stamps must have been created on the basis of at least a limited initial collaboration between both postal administrations. Therefore, we will report this pair in the catalogue and I am sure, collector will be glad to have a funny story to tell behind these two stamps, despite the non-recognition of the joint character by one part. If we discover in a near future, another example of such (unilateral) twin stamps, we will probably have to create a new sub-type in our classification system.

Another astonishing point relates to the illustration. It represents the construction of the cathedral of Bichvinta, based on a design of Father Cristoforo Castelli (1597-1659). Bichvinta (also called Pitsunda) is located in Abkhazia, a territory that is under Russian control since 2008…

3 thoughts on “Georgia’s diplomatic relations – 30 years

  1. You defined the issues as “Georgia’s Independence 30th Anniversary”…
    In my opinion this definition is Wrong !!!
    All 3 issues clearly celebrate 30 years of Diplomatic Relations between Giorgia and the other countries – no mentioning of Giorgia’s Independence…

    Like

    1. Right. Independence of Georgia took officially place on April 9, 1991, i.e. more than thirty years ago. Over the following years, Georgia diplomatic relations were established with a large number of countries among which Azerbaijan (November 18, 1992), Israel (June 1, 1992) and Italy (May 11, 1992). None of the joint issue stamps were released on the day of the 30th anniversary. However, the title of the article had to be modified accordingly. Thank you.

      Like

Leave a Reply

Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s