Hong Kong

November 2025 update

by Richard Zimmermann

Latest issues:

On November 6, 2025, PR China joined Samoa to issue stamps related to birds. Two identical stamps were issued by each country, showing the white horse chicken (Crossoptilon crossoptilon) and the tooth-billed dove (Didunculus strigirostris). Detailed information from Samoa is still missing and the Samoan stamps depicted below may only be a design and not the final one.

From November 9 to 21, 2025, China (PR), Hong Kong and Macau organized the 15th Chinese National Games held in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao. These games were celebrated with stamps from each postal entity that became available on the opening day on November 9, 2025. China released three stamps representing artistic (synchronized) swimming, fencing and table tennis, in panes of 12 each (3x[3×4]), but also as a souvenir sheet containing two strips of the three stamps. Hong Kong issued four different stamps depicting rugby sevens and track cycling, fencing and beach volleyball, golf and triathlon (swimming, cycling, running), handball and basketball. These stamps were issued in panes of 25 stamps (4x[5×5]). Macao released four different stamps showing rugby sevens, basketball, table tennis and volleyball in form of blocks of 4 printed in panes with 4 blocks each, also in four different orders, so that the four se-tenant stamps can be collected either in blocks or in strips of 4 ([2b4x2]. Additionally, all these 11 stamps were printed also within a souvenir sheet, which leads to consider this issue as a Se-tenant issue [S20251109], similar to the Chinese astrological signs stamps issued by these same three postal entities at the beginning of each year (Eric Chan, USA).

On November 25, 2025, as scheduled, Luxembourg and the Vatican State joined to celebrate the 100 years of the Pontifical Institute for Christian Archeology – Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana (PIAC), with an identical stamp showing the portrait of Bishop Jean-Pierre Kirsch (1861-1941), the building of the historic headquarters on Via Napoleone III in Rome and the seal of the Institute showing the ‘Christ shepherd’. The PIAC was founded on December 11, 1925, by Pope Pius XI with the Apostolic Constitution Ad providentiam of March 2, 1925, and with the motu proprio “The Primitive Christian Cemeteries,” thanks also to the dedication of the Luxembourgish prelate Johann Peter Kirsch, who was its first Director (Eric Contesse, France and Enzo Cafaro, Italy).

At the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the relationship between Indonesia and the Vatican State, the Vatican issued a stamp on November 7, 2025, that has not yet found a counterpart in Indonesia. This stamp description is reported here primarely to obtain information out of Indonesia and to confirm that it will probably not lead to a joint issue.

From Jaap Sarelse, the Netherlands: On May 7, 2025, Liechtenstein and Switzerland each issued a crypto stamp (Crypto CHLI) as a joint issue showing a cow and mountains, forming a continuous image when placed next to each other. The cow was available in 6 colors, with the rainbow cow having the lowest circulation (50) and the green cow the highest 7500. FDCs were also available, but in limited circulation: 10 copies with rainbow cows; 2500 copies with green cows. This issue was reported earlier.

Liechtenstein and Switzerland decided to extend this series with a similar crypto joint issue. On November 19, 2025, the so-called world’s first Christmas Crypto Stamp was released as an exclusive joint issue of Liechtenstein and Swiss Post (Crypto CHLI 2.0). The same six crypto cows from May 7, 2025 are now presented in a winter landscape. The stamps are embellished with glittering snowflakes. As you can imagine, these items, considered more as numismatic items than philatelic ones, even if they really can be used as stamps, look again like a lottery and have been created to fool collectors. Prices for individual items vary between 10 and 500 Swiss Francs (CHF) for stamps and between 30 and 2,000 CHF for mixed FDCs. We do not recommend to buy them, but they will be reported in the catalogue in the same way as the original items were described [P20250507], with the usual purchasing warning.

On September 16, 2025, San Marino issued a series of four stamps dedicated to UNESCO sites in Andorra, Cyprus, Malta, and Portugal. None of these stamps was associated with stamps issued at the same date by one of these countries. On November 4, 2025, however, the post of Spanish Andorra issued a stamp related to ‘about’ 30 years of diplomatic relationship (1993-2023), without any counterpart from San Marino. There is no link between these two stamps and therefore, also no joint character for these issues. They are reported here simply for information purpose (Enzo Cafaro, Italy).

Issues to be released soon:

On December 1, 2025, Cyprus and Vietnam will celebrate their fiftieth anniversary of diplomatic relations with a twin issue. The Cyprus FDC became available recently (Kenneth Sequeira, Dubai).

The joint issue between Russia and Oman, originally scheduled for April 22, 2025, postponed to September 26, 2025, then successively to October 15, November 14, and December 5, 2025, is now planned to be issued on December 10, 2025.

The Barbados embroidery dove stamp associated to the [T20250919a] issue is apparently expected to be issued on December 8, 2025.

All this information was introduced in the updated catalogue sections (Vol 16). A great thanks to all the contributors mentionned in the text between brackets.

UPU 150th anniversary

by Richard Zimmermann

The Universal Postal Union (UPU) is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) that coordinates postal policies among member nations and facilitates a uniform worldwide postal system. It comprises 192 member states and is headquartered in Bern, Switzerland. It was established on October 9, 1874, exactly 150 years ago.

Since more than one year, we know that this anniversary will be celebrated with a stamp which common design was proposed by UPU. In the past, the 75th (1949) UPU anniversary was celebrated, but in a non-coordinated way, mainly by colonial entities (British, Dutch and French – D19490704, D19491001, D19491010, D19491018) and the 100th (1974) anniversary with stamps that remained different for all participating countries (N19741009). The same situation happened in 1999, with absence of concertation for the 125th anniversary celebration (N19991009). Eventually, so far, only the 145th anniversary in 2019 (T20191009b) could be considered as a Twin issue.

During this year of 2024, a very large number of countries are participating. In the strict sense, this has to be considered as a true joint issue, even if there was no real cooperation between countries, but a proposal of a design accepted by most of them and translated in a locally adapted stamp, for a large part of them issued at the anniversary date. It is not an Omnibus series, as Omnibus is defined by a central printing, not by the large number of participating countries. The 2024 stamps will be reported in the catalogue as a Twin issue under [T20241009]. It is easily understandable that some joint issues collectors do not integrate such large series in their collection, in the same way Europa-CEPT stamps are not acceptable for them. Each individual collector has to decide on the basis of the following.

In the catalogue, the countries will be divided in subgroups:

  • A: the countries which take the exact original design proposed by UPU and issue the stamp(s) on October 9, 2024 (or actually around this date, plus or minus a week, roughly between October 1 and October 17, 2024), according to the definition of a twin issue [T]
  • B: the countries which take the exact original design but issue the stamp at a different date. It should not be surprising if some countries may issue their stamp in 2025 or even 2026. This is the equivalent of a Concerted issue [C]
  • C: the countries which use only a part of the design, actually integrating only the “150” logo and add some other illustrations. This logo can appear within the stamp, or on the margin of a souvenir sheet or within a label. Those stamps are also considered as twin or concerted issues of Type [T2] or [C2]
  • D: the countries which use a completely different design, but still issue their stamp(s) around October 9, 2024. This is the equivalent of a Parallel issue [P]. In this case, the original logo may appear on the stamp, but at a size that remains smaller than the half of the surface of the stamp
  • E: finally the countries that do not want to stick to design and date, and work on their own, just referring to the UPU anniversary. These countries are simply listed, without details, as they cannot be considered as joint [N].

We will have again to take care of stamps that are created by agencies that are producing stamps for certain countries but which have been given the freedom to issue stamps without a real control from the reference countries. These stamps are easily recognized by the number of stamps issued in a series and they are produced to fool collectors. In order to better identify these stamps and because they remain real stamps but never reach the originating country, they will be reported in the catalogue, but in italics. In the same way, some other stamps such as the French stamp with a full common logo are of private origin (personalized stamp) that cannot be considered as part of this joint issue either. This will be true for any other privately produced stamp from other countries, if any, and also described in italic characters.

The countries for which we already have information are reported below. If a date between brackets is missing behind the country name, this means that this stamp(s) was issued on October 9, 2024. If the content of the brackets remains empty, this means that the exact issue date is not known yet. A large number of images were provided by Enzo Cafaro (Italy). The following list is of course not yet complete.

Countries of type A (Twin [T1]): Algeria – Andorra (French) (October 10) – Andorra (Spanish) – Armenia – Bangladesh – Belarus – Bosnia Herzegovina (Bosnia) – Brazil – China (PR) – Croatia – Cyprus – Dominican Republic – Greece – Guernsey – India – Indonesia – Ivory Coast – Jordan – Latvia – Lithuania (October 4) – Mauritius – Moldova – Myanmar – Paraguay – Peru – Romania – Sri Lanka – Thailand – Turkmenistan (October 8) – Ukraine – United Arab Emirates

Countries of type B (Concerted [C1]): Argentina (August 28) – Azerbaijan (February 1) – Burundi (September) – Central Africa (September) – Djibouti (September) – Georgia (June 1) – Guinea (September) – Guinea-Bissau (September) – Liberia (September) – Mali (September) – Monaco (May 30) – Mongolia (September 25) – Sierra Leone (September) – Togo (September)

Countries of type C (Twin or concerted [T2] or [C2]): Bosnia (Serbia) – Egypt () – France (October 14) – Hong Kong – Hungary (July 24) – Isle of Man (August 30) – Japan – Kyrgyzstan (October) – Luxembourg (September 10) – Macau – Malaysia – Morocco – Pakistan – Portugal – San Marino – Saudi Arabia () – Singapore – Slovenia – Spain – Syria – Tunisia – Türkiye – Uruguay – Uzbekistan () – Vietnam

Countries of type D (Parallel issue [P]): Australia (October 1) – Austria (October 4) – Brunei Darussalam () – Bulgaria – Czech Republic – French Polynesia – Germany (October 10) – Macedonia (North) – Mexico – Montenegro – Qatar () – Russia – Slovakia – Switzerland (September 5) – Tajikistan (May) – Vatican (September 16) – Wallis and Futuna

Countries of type E (not considered as joint): Belgium (June 10) – Serbia (May 25) – United Nations – Geneva (May 30) – United Nations – New York (May 30) – United Nations – Vienna (May 30).

So far, 86 countries are listed above to which one has to add 2 postal authorities that have issued stamps that cannot be considered as joint (Type E – United Nations offices are not taken in account as countries, UPU being a sub-unit of the United Nations). The UPU counts presently 192 members, which means information from 106 countries (!) is missing. Obviously there will be an update of this page. A great help is needed here to recover information from other participating countries. We are also missing better quality images for stamps from Ivory Coast and Ukraine. Thanks a lot in advance for providing name of missing countries, exact dates of issue, and when possible illustrations, printing runs, sizes of panels and by-product lists.

The catalogue pages should be updated within the next week.

Update November 2023

by Richard Zimmermann

A joint issue between Panama and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) was under discussion for a long time with proposals for issue dates fluctuating over the past months. Eventually, the stamps were issued. The SMOM stamps were released on October 26, 2023, which was also given initially as first day of issue for the Panama stamp. However, the official ceremony is now scheduled to take place in Rome on December 4, 2023, which could become the official date of issue of the Panama stamp as well, even if first day cancellations from October 26, 2023 have already been seen. We will need to confirm the first date of issue for both countries within the next days or weeks. At least, in the meantime, we can provide pictures of the stamps. SMOM has take the same design but, it was divided in three vertical stamps with quite a high denomination each. Thanks to Jaap Sarelse (The Netherlands), Enzo Cafaro (Italy), Eric Contesse (France) for information and exchanges over several months about this issue.

Following the large number of stamps issued at the occasion of the Tanzanian PAPU building inauguration (see previous post), almost the same countries (with stamps produced at the same central place) joined the World Post Day series issued on October 9, 2023 [B20231009]. To the original short list including Egypt and Sri Lanka, one has now to add the following countries: Central African Republic, Djibouti, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Niger, Sierra Leone and Togo. Each of these countries issued a stamp in miniature sheets of 8 stamps [4×2] and a souvenir sheet with a single stamp, all available as perforated and non-perforated products. On top of this, a miniature sheet of 4 pairs of se-tenant stamps including in the following order Liberia, Central African Republic, Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone was produced. In the same way described for the PAPU stamps in the previous post, the large number of products from these additional countries must also be considered as abusive, but these stamps will be reported in the catalogue for those collectors who are still interested.

From Uri Barlev (Israel): On December 12, 2023, a joint issue involving Israel and Guatemala will be released. The issue topic shows lakes, the Israeli Lake of Galilee (the Kinneret) and the Guatemalan Lake Atitlan. Uri was able to provide the first images of the Israeli stamp as well as the FDC. Thanks Uri.

At the beginning of the year 2024, China (PR), Hong Kong and Macau will celebrate the new year of the dragon with a se-tenant souvenir sheet [S] including four stamps from each postal administration (information provided by Wayne Chen, USA).

Additional news: following an exchange with the Hungarian Post, Kenneth Sequeira (Dubai) was confirmed of the cancellation of the Hungaria – India joint issue dedicated to the Art of Amrita Sher-Gil and initially scheduled to be issued during the fourth quarter of 2023.

The catalogue pages in Vol I and XV will be updated with all this new information within the next three days.

Belt and Road Initiative 10th anniversary

by Richard Zimmermann

China (PR), Hong Kong and Macau celebrated on September 7, 2023, the 10th anniversary of the Belt and road Initiative (BRI) with one stamp for China and a souvenir sheet each for the two other postal administrations. The Chinese stamps were issued in miniature sheets of 8 [4×2] or 12 [3×4] stamps with colored margins. As such this issue can be considered as a Dependency Parallel issue [PD]. Additionally, the three post offices created a booklet containing the two souvenir sheets and a miniature sheet of 4 Chinese stamps [2×2] with white margins. The Macau and Hong Kong souvenir sheets from this booklet have an additional white margin of about 6 mm on the left sign, and therefore can be differentiated from the original isolated souvenir sheets. The amount of 141,400 booklets was printed and redistributed to the different post offices. These booklets bear on the back cover a code number starting with the letter A, B or C, corresponding respectively to the Chinese, Hong Kong or Macau sales origin. Macau announced that they were attributed 15,000 samples but the allocation of the rest among China and Hong Kong is not known. With this booklet, this issue can be considered as Se-tenant and as such will be filed under the code [S20230907]. This is the 12th joint issue between these three postal administrations.