Iraq

Arab Post Day update and more to come

by Richard Zimmermann

Both previous blog pages triggered attention from collectors and resulted in additional information that help complete the catalogue:

Regarding the Arab Postal Day issue [T20250803], two additional countries have to be added to the already reported list (Algeria, Iraq, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates) namely, Egypt and Oman which issued their stamps respectively on August 3, 2025 and August 10, 2025 (Information provided by Mohamed Achour Ali Ahmed, Algeria and Ali Allawati, Oman).

The 80th Arab League anniversary issue from March 22, 2025 [T20250322] was also completed by two stamps issued in miniature sheets of 3 pairs from the United Arab Emirates. These stamps were issued on August 18, 2025 (Information provided by Kenneth Sequeira, Singapore).

The previous blog page was also missing the image of the Russian stamp jointly issued with North Korea on August 15, 2025. Illustration was provided by Kenneth Sequeira, Singapore, confirming the twin character.

I also made a comment earlier that embroided stamps are never used postally. Henri Aronis (France) provided a proof that this can happen with a Swiss stamp (year 2000), although not part of a joint issue. As expected, the thickness of the ‘stamp’ makes cancellation illegible. This cover was sent from Switzerland to Niger. Thanks Henri.

Jaap Sarelse (the Netherlands) reacted on the comments provided earlier about the July 5, 2025 Cape Verde – Portugal joint issue and at the same time provided information about Angola, a third country joining this issue, with the following:

“The text suggests that it is a joint issue in which only Cape Verde and Portugal are involved. However, Angola is also involved with an identical stamp. Not to commemorate Angolan independence, but purely focused on the independence of Cape Verde. Some evidence:

  • In the leaflet of the Portuguese Post (6 pages) the text on page 5, 7th and 8th line from the bottom reads: ‘To help consolidate the historic memory of the founding of the Republic of Cabo Verde, a joint stamp issue is being released by Angola, Cabo Verde and Portugal’.
  • On page 5, one can find the stamps of Angola on the top row. Cabo Verde is also mentioned on this stamp at the bottom right.
  • Finally, only Cabo Verde is mentioned in the logo on page 1. I suspect that in the context of ’50 anos Independência Nacional’ Angola will get its own joint issue and that the name Angola will then adorn below the stars in the logo“

Thanks, Jaap for this complement. Catalogue will be updated. Here are the additional illustrations (Angola stamp illustrations provided by Kenneth Sequeira):

Additional information relative to issues to come include the following:

  • The Oman – Russia originally scheduled for April 22, 2025, is now postponed to September 26, 2025 (Oman source) or October 15, 2025 (Russian source), not clear at this stage. It will show maps and honour Omani explorer Ahmed bin Majid and the Russian traveler Afanasy Nikitin
  • Kenneth Sequeira reported also two modifications in the Russian philatelic programme for 2025: a) the RCC stamps will be issued on August 23, 2025, but over the past years these stamps involving all CIS countries were not anymore considered as joint and there is no hint that this will change this year; b) the anniversary of the liberation of Korea will be celebrated by overprinting the August 15, 2025 joint issue with North Korea. These stamps will be issued on September 2, 2025
  • On October 7, 2025, the France – Japan is also confirmed. Japan stamp designs became available (information provided by Dominique Josse, France)

  • On August 15, 2025, Argentina issued a stamp to celebrate 60 years of immigration from Korea. No stamps related to the same topic was seen so far in the South Korea philatelic program. This issue may remain unilateral (information provided by Enzo Cafaro, Italy)

  • Our friend Luis Alejandro Malanco Reyes (Mexico) is working on a Mexican stamp catalogue (which of course includes also joint issues involving Mexico) and brought on line the first part of his work (years 2001-2025) with free access: Catálogo Filatélico México . Congratulations Luis and keep doing the good job.

Finally, some information about the next joint crypto-stamps issue (not recommanded to include in the joint issue collection as explained earlier): This will be the fourth crypto joint issue after the 2022 Austria-Netherlands (Ox), 2023 Austria-Luxembourg-Netherlands (Lion) and 2024 Austria-Belgium-Luxembourg-Netherlands (dragon) issues. The theme for this fourth issue is the Greek world of the gods. Five countries will participate and they made the following choice: Portugal – Poseidon, Austria – Zeus and Hera (2 stamps), Belgium – Athena, Luxembourg – Artemis and the Netherlands – Hermes.

Jaap Sarelse has succesfully created joint stamp covers with the previous crypto stamps and will try again this year with the six stamps. He provided the picture of the copy from year 2024. Such documents are close to unique.

The catalogue was update with all above new data. See updated Vol 1, Vol 15 and Vol 16

Arab Postal Day 2025

by Richard Zimmermann

On August 3, 2025, Arab countries join to celebrate the Arab Postal Day with a stamp showing an identical design ‘Towards more innovative postal services’. So far, this issue involves Algeria (August 3), Iraq (August 3), Tunisia (August 3), and United Arab Emirates (August 3). More countries will probably be added (Information provided by Mohamed Achour Ali Ahmed, Algeria and Kenneth Sequeira, Singapore).

Additionally to earlier information related to the 80th anniversary of Arab League [T20250322], Kenneth Sequeira (Singapore) informed us that Sudan issued three stamps with three different denominations, not a single one as previously announced.

In the meantime, Qatar became also another country to be added to this series. The stamp was issued on June 15, 2025. There are still some chances that additional Arab countries will have to be added to this series.

UPU 150th anniversary: a first update

by Richard Zimmermann

As anticipated, the list of stamps issued at the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Universal Postal Union and described in an earlier page was not complete. Very quickly after publication, several collectors provided additional information. Here I have to thank Ali Ahmed Med Achour (Algeria), Enzo Cafaro (Italy), and Tolga Caglayankaya (Netherlands) for some of these additional data.

This complementary list is divided using the same structure as the one provided earlier:

Countries of Type A (Twin [T1], same date, same design), additional countries: Cambodia – Guatemala – Kazakhstan (October 15) – Libya – Nigeria.

Also we have to report an additional product for Indonesia (souvenir sheet, illustration above). Already reported Ukrainian stamps available so far are provided in form of either isolated stamps or miniature sheets of 5 stamps made of a top part with the design and a label with the letter “U” which stands in place of the denomination. In these products, this letter “U” is located on the left side. It appears that in some FDCs, the label bears the letter “U” on the right side. FDCs with left-side positionned letter “U” do exist as well. Mint stamps or miniature sheets with “U” on the right side have not been seen so far. In fact, these Ukrainian products are from private production (personalized stamps), but approved by Ukrainian Post. Also, looking closer to the background of the illustrated part of each stamp, it appears that the miniature sheet shows 6 different designs background, which are different from the stamps in panes or used on FDCs.

New country of Type B (Concerted [C1], different dates, same design): Malta (October 31)

In this series it was also discovered that Mali stamps produced with denomination 200F and 1000F, do exist as miniature sheets of 6 and panes of 20 (French language), also as a postal card, but the 1000F value became also available in 5 additional languages in panes, in souvenir sheet of 6 different stamps, with two different formats ([2×3] and [3×2]), perforated or imperforated. This is obviously expensive material to fool collectors (even if reported as ‘official’, they will never reach postal offices) and as such, they will be reported in italic characters in the catalogue with the mention ‘not recommended to buy’. Just as an additional note, the denomination of 1000 Malian Francs (FCFA) is equivalent today to about € 1.50. Right now, as these stamps are still supposed to be available from the Malian post office (if true), one should not pay more than twice this amount. Otherwise, the terms of “official” or “proof” are just artificial and shortage/rarity is organized by the printer.

New countries of Type C (modified design – only logo [T2], [C2]): Botswana (September 29) – Iraq – Liechtenstein – Netherlands. The information about Liechtenstein and Netherlands stamps is still uncomplete. It seems that these stamps were produced last minute and they are not described with details in the official channel).

Regarding Botswana, the country issued on September 29, 2024 four different zebra stamps in panes and together in a miniature sheet with the four stamps. A fifth stamp became available as part of a souvenir sheet with the UPU logo in the margin. Only this souvenir sheet can be considered as being part of the joint issue.

New country of Type D (different design, but same date [P1]): Seychelles

New country of Type E (different design, different date [N]): Poland (1 stamp, October 30, 2024)

This is a first update, because it is quite clear that more stamps related to this anniversary will be released (or simply discovered), probably even during the year 2025.

Mid Summer 2024 update

by Richard Zimmermann

On August 8, 2024, the ten ASEAN countries decided again to issue jointly stamps (previous ASEAN joint issue goes back to 2019). Don Birschel (USA) provided the images of the first released ASEAN stamps and featuring general post offices. So far, the following country stamp images became available: Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The four other countries, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos and the Philippines are also supposed to have participated, but information is still missing at this stage.

Ali Ahmed Med Achour (Algeria) provided the following information: On the sidelines of the 45th session of the Permanent Arab Postal Commission held on July 18, 2024 at the headquarters of the General Secretariat of the Arab League in Cairo (Egypt), the Commission responsible for choosing the design of the “Unified Arab Stamp” dedicated to Gaza delivered its verdict. The model presented by Jordan will illustrate this stamp to be released this year. No specific issue date was lilinked to the issue so far. The countries that participated in this competition included Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine and Qatar.

The title of this issue will be “Solidarity with Gaza”. Its issue will coincide with the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People established by the United Nations. It is generally held on November 29 of each year to mark the anniversary of Resolution 181, which is the Partition Plan for Palestine.
The 2024 philatelic program published at the beginning of the year by the Algerian postal administration has already selected this date of November 29, 2024 for the release of this joint issue. The list of countries that will participate to this issue is not known, but probably at least all countries having participated to the design competition will release a stamp. This issue will definitely become a twin omnibus series. The picture of the winning design is provided below.

The Grenada – South Korea joint stamps celebrating the 50th anniversary of relationship were issued as scheduled on August 1, 2024. The identical pairs of stamp show the Marryshow House in St George’s, Grenada and the Jibokjae Hall (library) at Gyeongbokgung Palace, Seoul, South Korea. Se-tenant stamps were released in miniature sheets of 8 pairs, chessboard ordered.

The China (PR) – Russia joint issue scheduled for August 4, 2024 (pandas) will in fact be released on August 24, 2024.

The Japan – Turkey joint issue scheduled for August 8, 2024 was released on that date in form of a single stamp for Turkey and a miniature sheet for Japan, with different designs.

All these new data have been integrated in the catalogue. Vol 1 and Vol 15 have been updated.

Monthly news (November 2022)

by Richard Zimmermann

Additional information related to the World Postal Day issue from October 9, 2022, [B20221009]: two new countries have to be added. First Iraq issued a stamp at a date that still needs to be confirmed, but probably also October 9, 2022. The second one, Venezuela, issued a stamp in miniature sheets of 6 (date of issue and high quality picture are missing). There are high chances that the list of presently 22 countries is still not complete. Additional information is welcome.

Note also that the Mexican stamp has been issued in panes of 50 stamps, but the miniature sheet of 6 stamps that was issued in parallel in fact contains 6 different stamps with heading in 6 different languages. The stamp in the middle of the first row (Spanish language) is the one issued in panes. As in items seen so far a printing number is added at the bottom right of each sheet, it seems that less than 1,000 miniature sheets have been printed.

Extension of the Austria Netherland crypto stamp from September 22, 2022. Another pair of joint crypto stamp was issued on November 22, 2022. This is the gold form of the previously issued crypto stamps, provided each with a 1g golden bar embedded in the card. The denomination is “R” for the Netherlands (999 samples), but “500,00” for the Austrian stamp (499 samples) sold at € 500. It is without saying that except if you are a collector of crypto stamps, we absolutely do not recommend to buy this item as part of the joint issues collection. With this low edition number, it is simply a product to fool collectors and the high price must be considered as a high risk investment. However, the product will be described in the catalogue in italic characters without providing a quotation. (as a reminder, the real value of a 1g bar of gold is estimated today at around €54)

There are still a few joint issues to be released before end of the year. We learned (Enzo Cafaro, Italy) that the Mexico counterpart of the Vatican State stamp already released on November 16, 2022 should become available on December 12, 2022. Enzo provided also first information about a Poland – Argentina joint issue released by Poland on Novemeber 25, 2022, for which we are still missing information from the Argentinian part. The Polish se-tenant stamps represent the Rufous hornero (Furnarius rufus), national bird of Argentina and the Crestet tit (Lophophanes cristatus).

The Catalogue Volume XV has been updated accordingly and the information has been dispatched as usually in Volume I.

Algiers Summit 2022 (2)

by Richard Zimmermann

The 2022 Arab Postal Union Algiers Summit took place on November 1 and 2, 2022 as announced. A stamp with a common design was supposed to be released by most of the participating members. Unfortunately, the information remains difficult to obtain. Most of the below was obtained from our friend Med Achour Ali Ahmed (Algeria), but the list still seems uncomplete.

So far, we had already reported about the following countries which had issued a stamp each: Egypt (August 3, 2022), Algeria (August 20, 2022), Oman (October, 2022), Djibouti (October 9, 2022) and Tunisia (October 25, 2022).

To this previous list, we can now add Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates, all of them having issued stamps on November 1, 2022.

These stamps represent 10 countries out of the 22 member states of the Arab League. So, another 12 potential participants could still participate or even may already have issued stamps. These include: Bahrain, Comoros, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Qatar, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Story to be followed …