During the month of August 2024 a few joint issues were supposed to take place and did not as expected. Also some additional information was provided for existing issues. Several collectors provided interesting information that are now described in this post.

The ASEAN series of August 8, 2024 was not completely described in the first blog page. Here are some additional pictures that were not shown so far. Brunei, Cambodia, Laos and the Philippines stamp pictures became available in the meantime.

On August 24, 2024, Russia and China (PR) were supposed to release joint stamps representing pandas. The date had already been postponed from originally August 4, 2024. Indeed, Russian stamps were released on that new date, but so far there are no news from China, the last Chinese stamps having been released on August 22, 2024. Any information is welcome.

When the Japan Turkish joint issue from August 6, 2024 was released, another miniature sheet containing five different stamps became available from the Turkish Post. This item was part of a limited edition folder that was printed only at 4,000 samples. Of course, this item needs to be described as complementary material in the catalogue, but this is not the kind of items we like, as, even if those stamps are to be considered a true postage material, due to the limited availability and probably their absence of use on mail, they are closer to expensive cinderellas than to true stamps.

Enzo Cafaro (Italy) contacted the Turkish postal administration, which answered that this issue is not considered by them as joint, despite same date and common logo. In fact, some postal administrations do consider an issue to be really joint only if they organize a common booth in both countries on the first day of issue and/or if they produce official mixed FDC. If that would be the criteria for defining joint issues, then half of the catalogue should be discarded. But in this case we still have a real proof of collaboration during the preparation phase, which eventually led to the conclusion that each country would work by its own, following just to an agreement about the content. Some exchange of material did take place (e.g., the logo). This issue will be considered and maintained in the catalogue as a parallel joint issue. Note that over the past 30 years, Türkiye (Turkey) and Japan issued at several occasions stamps with the common topic of relationship (1988, 1990, 2010, 2019, 2021 and now 2024), some of them being considered as joint and described in the catalogue. Up to you to decide if you want to add those to your collection. In the catalogue, the stamps will be considered as a true parallel issue, but the additional Turkish miniature sheet will be described in italics and gray color.

On a completely different aspect, note also that the Turkish government has recommended and requested that the English spelling of the country name should now be ‘Türkiye‘ instead of ‘Turkey’, while the adjective Turkish can continue to be used. Starting 2024, we will use in the catalogue the new spelling ‘Türkiye’ but keep the older spelling between brackets i.e. ‘Türkiye (Turkey)’, in order to avoid the loss of some information when using e.g. the ‘Search’ tool.

Very recently, we heard about an Uruguay – Korea (South) joint issue and got, through Enzo Cafaro (Italy), information from the Uruguayan side. The stamps were issued on September 10, 2024, but no information is available so far from South Korea. Help is also needed here.