The Catalogue Quarterly Reports, complement to the 1998 Catalogue of Joint Stamp Issues (Volume 1 to 15) published on a quarterly basis between 1999 and 2001, (these leaflets were never available on line beforeand are reproduced here in color, whenever possible)
The Quarterly Reports (Volume 16 to 39), only in English, improvement of the Complement, published between 2002 and 2006
The 2006 Catalogue of Joint issues (English) – 500 samples were printed (a few remain availableif interested)
The Catalogue Supplements published on a yearly basis between 2007 and 2022 (English) until the 2022 Catalogue became available on line
The pages of information from the first web site (http://www.philarz.net) that were filed in the News Archives. These pages were updated regularly between 2010 and 2020 (English) and archived in Quarterly pages.
From 2022 on, the new catalogue became available, associated to this new web pages and blog. In total, this new section provides access to additional 3,300+ archive pages. The interest is mainly to get access to the history of the creation of some joint issues, to some monographs, to some specific articles and to some images in particular first day cancellations or non-approved joint issues. Of course, this is also the first time that the 2006 catalogue is on line.
In parallel, another chapter was opened providing access to a maximum of dedicated articles that were published over the past 30 years. The list is obviously not complete, but additions are welcome. The articles are provided as pdf copies and in their original language (no translation is provided at this stage). So far, 22 articles have been posted representing 83 published pages to read. The list does not include the stamp description leaflets (notices, leaflets, press releases, …) issued by individual postal administrations.
The new catalogue of Joint Stamp Issues 2025 is now on line with the section of the stamps issued during the year 2024 fully updated. In order to keep an average of about 100-130 pages per volume facilitating a quick downloading, the year 2024 needed to be separared from the 2022-2023 period (Volume XV) and a new volume numbered XVI, containing years 2024-2025 was created.
This new updated catalogue, the 2025 version in 16 volumes, has now reached 1,900 pages. It contains over 2,280 entries among which more than 1,580 can be considered as true joint issues (unique, se-tenant, twin, concerted or parallel). It describes in total more than 16,100 items, and it is illustrated with above 8,900 pictures, providing also more than 35,100 quotations. This upgrade allowed also to make a comparison of the evolution of the number of issues of joint stamps for statistical purpose, which leads to a graph looking as follow:
It appears that after a strong progression over the years 1980-2010, the number of new yearly issues reached a kind of plateau over the past 15 years, with an average of 40 issues per year. The progression affected only the twin joint issues while the number of parallel/concerted issues remained stable over the past 50 years. However, the number of different products for each issue such as additional souvenir sheets, booklets, miniature sheets or mixed cancelled products, or the number of total stamps per issue did progress as well. In parallel, we have also to observe that the number of abusive joint issues (issues involving a high number of countries not fully controlled by the local postal administrations, but printed centrally) has increased. We will still continue to identify those issues separately, and even if we continue to have them described in the catalogue for the sake of completeness (gray color and italics characters), it will remain up to the individual collectors to decide if they want to include and purchase them. Typically, these stamps will not gain value over time, will be difficult to resell and are usually not accepted in exhibitions.
Joint issues are a mirror of the political state of the world. The increasing number of conflict situations is not in favor of a progression of the number of joint issues. Several planned issues were cancelled during the past five years, due to political concerns. My wish for the next year(s) is to be able to report soon a first joint issue e.g., involving Israel and Iran, North and South Korea or Ukraine and Russia, which would become the best sign of a progression toward world peace.
Among the major improvements, note that at least 25 new items describing mixed FDCs have been added over the period 2021-2024. We own a huge thank to Jaap Sarelse (The Netherlands) for his great work and time spent over the past 30 years in providing this information, finding the items and even trying to create such mixed products whenever possible. The existence of mixed first day cancelled products remains the ultimate proof of the joint character as both postal administrations must have agreed for the production and existence of such items.
On top of the additions of new 2024 issues described in previous blog pages, one has to note the following:
On September 14, 2024, Bangladesh re-issued an older stamp from 2001 with a handstamp “DHAKAPEX”. This issue is now described in the catalogue under the original stamp heading [T20011009] together with all the other stamps of the same series. This gave the opportunity also to update the texts and images of these stamps in the catalogue as this entry was only partially illustrated. As much as 75 new images over three pages were introduced to illustrate this entry.
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is celebrating during the year 2025, its 160th anniversary. The UPU did send on October 28, 2024 a circular to all its members, asking that if they want to commemorate this anniversary, they can use the new logo of the event. The way this letter is presented clearly shows that this is not a call for a joint issue. So, at this stage and in absence of further notice, stamps that will be produced during the year 2025 and bearing the below logo will not be considered as joint, as they are simply commemorative stamps based on individual initiatives.
On the contrary, the design of the 2026 PostEurop stamps to be issued at the occasion of the 70th anniversary of PostEurop, was released by beginning of January 2025. A common stamp will be used at this occasion, based on a contest that a Finnish group did win.
One has also to note a small modification regarding the December 20, 2021 issue involving Colombia and Mexico. The Mexican stamps were issued on December 20, 2021, but the Colombian stamp became only available on January 25, 2022. However, it appears that the Colombian FDC and the mixed FDC are still cancelled from December 20, 2021. This issue which was initailly considered as a Concerted one under the heading number C20211220 is now reported as the twin issue T20211220.
The same modification affected the stamps issued on October 16, 2023, involving Vietnam and India. Small amounts of Vietnam stamps became available at one post office at the original day of issue (April 28, 2023), but stamps were retrieved after sale of the first batch of 4,000 units. India announced three times the release of their stamps until they became eventually available on October 16, 2023. These delays led to consider initially this series as Concerted. However, the mixed FDC of this issue is cancelled with dates from October 16, 2023 for both countries and therefore these stamps are filed as twin [T20231016]. Covers with Vietnamese stamps cancelled before October 16, 2023 are rarities.
It is time to clean the catalogue and to amend it with the information collected over the Summer. Unfortunately, a quite large number of announced issues did not (yet) materialize. From the ones listed so far, one can consider that the following issues have failed or were wrongly attributed a joint character:
The 150th anniversary of the relationship between Japan and Peru translated in a miniature sheet with 10 different stamps issued on August 21, 2023 by Japan and a pair of se-tenant stamps from Peru, supposed to be released by end of October 2023. The bilateral treaty was signed on August 21, 1873. In absence of common date of issue, common design and no announcement of collaboration for the creation of these stamps, they cannot be considered as joint. This is simply a set of stamps celebrating the same event without joint character (information provided by Kenneth Sequeira, Singapore).
The expected French – Poland 100th anniversary of Polish immigration to France stamps were limited to the French stamp issued on September 4, 2023. No link with Poland was created at this occasion.
Additional information posted 20230929: Poland issued on September 29, 2023, a stamp related to this topic, with a different design, and Polish postal administration confirmed this is not to be considered as joint.
We are still waiting for information regarding the following issues, but there is a great doubt that they will really materialize:
No news from the India Vietnam ‘Fighting Sports’ joint issue originally to be released on April 23, 2023. Actually, the Vietnamese stamps were released on that date, but rapidly retrieved from sale after about 4,000 samples went on the market. No information is available from the Indian side.
No news from this other Vietnam stamps supposed to become a joint issue with Uruguay. The Uruguay souvenir sheet was released on April 27, 2023
Morocco and Oman did not issue a common stamp in May 2023 as previously announced
No news from the India Mauritius joint issue supposed to be released on August 25, 2023
The few joint issues that became available at post offices are reported in the catalogue. The catalogue was updated with all this information and the information is available in Vol XV – V07. Additional information introduced in the catalogue include the following:
In the T20230509 PostEurop series, the Nagorno Karabagh stamps are also described as non-perforated (Information provided by Kay Sorensen, Germany). We are still missing information from Albania and apparently Armenia will not participate this year (to be confirmed).
SEPAC stamps are not anymore joint issues (only the topic is common) but all stamps, mint, are presented in a yearly folder that is described in Vol I – V06, chapter “Folders and Booklets”
Eventually Ali Ahmed Med Achour (Algeria) signaled an error on the Algerian stamp from the T20230902 PAPU series. Within the stamp, the Arabic words refer to the town of Arusha and do not mention the PAPU tower. The complete Arabic text should look like the one printed on the Moroccan or the Egyptian stamps (see illustrations below). On the margin of the sheet, there is also a single Arabic word next to the English title, that simply means “inauguration”.
Next to the large PostEurop series issued around May 9, 2023, a few other countries released joint issues:
The Belarus – Russia joint issue was released on May 13, 2023. They celebrate the 150th anniversary of the painter Stanislas Zhukovsky (1873-1944) under the form of a souvenir sheet from each country representing a different painting. The margin shows different portraits of the painter. As a consequence, this becomes a parallel issue [P1]. Belarus issued 10,000 souvenir sheets, but also 5,000 samples as imperforate, while Russia issued 20,000 souvenir sheets as well as 4,200 samples of a special folder containing the same souvenir sheet, imperforated.
Milan Csaplar (Slovakia) provided update about future joint issues involving Slovakia. The design of the Slovakia – SMOM issue became available and the stamps will be released on June 23, 2023. Reminder: as SMOM is not recognized by UPU and as no other country is involved in this issue, this pair will not be approved as joint, but still be reported in the catalogue for collectors of SMOM stamps. The design of the Joint Issue with the Czech Republic at the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the Czech Post and the Slovak Post was also released. These stamps are supposed to be released on October 2, 2023.
Enzo Cafaro (Italy) provided information about a joint issue between the Sovereign Order of Malta (SMOM) and the Vatican City issued on May 16, 2023 and commemorating the 825th anniversary of the dedication of the Cathedral Santa Maria Assunta in Spoleto (1198). Stamps are identical and show the façade of the cathedral, also known as Duomo of Spoleto, and a fresco by Filippo Lippi dedicated to the Stories of the Virgin (15th century). However as SMOM is not recognized by UPU, this issue cannot be recognized as a true joint issue and will be reported in the catalogue for SMOM collectors but under the heading Non-accepted [N].
Vietnam appears also in two official joint issues, but information to complete these series is missing. We reported already the picture of the joint issue with India (April 23, 2023), but are still waiting for India’s counterpart. Uruguay announced and released a souvenir sheet related to the 30th anniversary of relation with Vietnam. Picture of the Uruguayan item released on April 27, 2023 is reproduced below, but no news is available from Vietnam.
Back to the 2023 PostEurop stamp issue, there is a clarification to make, following a note sent by Stewie Griffin: BeePost (actually very close link to Stamperija and Peterstamps, same office address) did not have the legal permission from PostEurop to print Europa stamps, nor to use the Europa logo and design. The BeePost stamps described in the previous Post related to Europa 2023 stamps must be considered as illegal and should not appear in a serious stamp collection. They will not be described in the catalogue either, when updated. Actually we learned also that BeePost’s website is now under “maintenance” and Stamperija removed all BeePost “stamps” from their website. Thanks for this information which details can be found under https://www.stampboards.com/viewtopic.php?t=100797
In the meantime additional stamps related to PostEurop Peace 2023 became available: Estonia (May 25, 2023, one stamp in miniature sheets of 10 stamps), Greenland (May 30, 2023, 2 stamps available in sheetlets of 10, but also in a booklet of blocks of 6 from each), Nagorno Karabakh now issuing stamps under the name of Republic of Artsakh (May 25, 2023, two stamps available in miniature sheets of 10, but also in a miniature sheet of 5 se-tenant pairs), and Belgium (to be released on June 12, 2023, but illustration already available; one stamp in a miniature sheet of 5 stamps). The illustrations of the stamps from Azerbaijan became also available, but the exact date of release (in June) is still not known.
In Denmark, the Europa stamp is presented in a form of a souvenir sheet including the common stamp and a second commemorating stamp representing a candle. This second Denmark stamp was originally issued in 1970 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the end of WWII. On May 4, 1945, a candle was put at all windows in Denmark, when armistice was signed, and this tradition continues since, symbolizing peace. The stamp from the souvenir sheet is an adapted reproduction of the 1970 stamp, but the isolated candle stamp issued as self-adhesive in a miniature sheet of 10, does have a different design. Only this isolated stamp bears the sentence “Sammen for fred” (Together for peace), which appears actually in the souvenir sheet only on the common stamp.
At this stage, for this 2023 Europa series, we are still missing information regarding the participation of Albania, Armenia, Georgia, the Isle of Man and Kazakhstan.
Eventually catalogues have been updated. Of course Volume 15 contains all new data and stamps released during the past two months, but also information about some new mixed covers created by Jaap Sarelse (the Netherlands) that had not been reported so far. Volume 2 has been completed with the 1950 (April 12) Milan Trade Fair stamps. And of course, the Country and Topic pages of Volume 1 have been updated at the same time, the new sub-category [P3] is described.
A year has been completed again. There is now little chance that a last minute 2022 joint issue is discovered and therefore the chapter 2022 in the catalogue can be closed as well. Information, images, and quotation have been updated for this full year.
Unfortunately, there are still missing information from some countries from which joint partners were expected. The Iran-Kenya stamps showing coffee beans and safran flower stamps and dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the establishment of Iran-Kenya diplomatic relations remain as a unilateral souvenir sheet issue from Iran on June 24, 2022. No information about Kenyan stamps issued during the year 2022 has been published. The situation is identical for the Iran – Serbia souvenir sheet (85 years of diplomatic relations, September 30, 2022) for which information about the Iranian stamps is missing. These unilateral issues have been removed from the catalogue, but in the case someone finds the missing information, here are the pictures of the issued stamps as a reminder.
The India-Vietnam and India – Thailand joint issues respectively announced by Vietnam and Thailand in their 2022 philatelic programs did not come to a finalized product. These joint issues may be rescheduled in 2023 but had to be removed from the catalogue as well.
Altogether, this allowed a complete update of the catalogue becoming now the 2023 edition V4.0 and all the 15 parts have been modified (mainly shift of pages) with minor improvement in each of the part.
At the same time, this work gave us the opportunity to provide some statistics about the joint issue season 2022. In terms of figures, the year 2022 translates in the following: there are 51 entries reported in the catalogue for the year 2022, but among which only 40 are true joint issues: 1 Se-tenant [S] but no Unique [U], 27 Twin (same design, same date of issue) [T], 7 Concerted (same design, different date of issue) and 5 Parallel [P] (same date of issue, different designs) issues. Additionally, we reported 2 Omnibus series [O], 2 Territorial issues [D] and 1 issue with Borrowed design [B]. For the year 2022, the catalogue provides 225 illustrations, describes 344 items together with 675 quotations.
Another interesting point relates to involved countries. As many as 66 countries participated at least to one true joint issue, but the winner is surprisingly Mexico with 7 participations. Mexico is followed by Russia (5 times, almost exclusively with Asian eastern countries) and by the group Argentina, Egypt, Georgia, Oman and Vatican which were involved 4 times each. This high participation of Oman and Georgia are also quite a surprise. Eventually Armenia, Belarus, Israel, Poland, Tunisia and the UAE were involved 3 times each. There are no new first comer in this 2022 list, but it is interesting to notice the come back of countries such as Cambodia, North Korea or Tanzania. This year also saw the issue of the first joint crypto stamps between Austria and the Netherlands.
The new version of thecatalogue in 15 volumesdescribes over 1,750 pages, 2,150 stamp issues among which more than 1,500 are true joint issues, and provides more than 8,100 illustrations. 32,900+ quotations are linked to more than 14,800 different items.
Note also that from now on, and in order to reduce the amount of intermediate versions in thearchive files, only the first edition of each year will be kept accessible. Numbering of intermediate version will continue to be used, but at the beginning of each year the versions with small modifications will be erased. The first version of each year will play the role of reference for earlier catalogue versions. Edition 2023 intiates the publication of V4.0.
To complete this exercice, it becomes also interesting to show the evolution of the production of Joint issues over the past years. On the basis of the catalogue entries, it became possible to create the following graph which shows the number of joint issues released each year since 1960. The blue curve gives the evolution of the number of Twin issues [T], the orange curve the combined Parallel [P] and Concerted [C] issues and the grey curve the total [T]+[P]+[C] including also the rare Unique [U] and Se-tenant [S] issues. Omnibus [O], Territorial [D] and Borrowed design [B] issues are not included in this graph. The peak release was reached in 2019, just before the Corona pandemic, with 53 true joint issues in one year, but the graph shows also an apparent plateau of around 40 issues per year that stays since 2007. Over this 15 years period, the number of products for a single country, and in particular by-products such as souvenir sheets, miniature sheets and even stationery, did continue to increase (not shown on the graph). A peak production of items above 500 was reached during the years 2016 and 2019, while the average figures since 2007 over this period was maintained around 280 (with severe variations during the Covid period, 230 in 2020, 140 in 2019 and back to 340 in 2022).
At this time it is difficult to predict the progression for the next years, but a stabilization around 40-45 issues per year would make sense. Continue enjoying collecting joint issues and have a nice year 2023.
A large update of the catalogue took place by end of October 2022, adding more than 10 pages to the Volume 15. The updated version of Catalogue 2022 Vol 15 V3.11 is now on line with new information for issues to be released in November and December 2022, but also a new list for issues expected during the year 2023. Major catalogue information affect the Tiger Forum series and the World Post Day issue with now 21 countries involved. Very recently, Argentina, Colombia and Mexico were added, but this list is still not complete. On page 1720 a non-approved ActNow – Stop the war series is described as well. The first list of countries participating to the common design stamp issue to be released at the occasion of the Arab League Summit is provided on page 1744. The other countries (up to a possible total of 22 countries possible) are expected to release their stamps by November 1-2, 2022.
The country and topic indexes of Volume 1 V3.06 have been updated accordingly.
The month of September 2022 saw a large number of joint issues appearing and more have to come in the following weeks. At the same time Jaap Sarelse (The Netherlands) was able to provide the material he collected over the year 2021 and the beginning of 2022. In particular, a high number of mixed FDCs could be obtained thanks to him and a lot of them were not described in the catalogue yet.
This led to a larger update of the catalogue in particular covering the years 2020 and 2021 for illustrations, leading to an additional full 4 pages, as well as supplementary material for the past months of 2022. Volume 14 and Volume 15 of the catalogue are now upgraded which information needed also to be distributed in the countries and topic tables of Volume 1. We leave you take a look, and if possible, don’t hesitate to provide the still missing information.
Joint Stamp Issues 
You must be logged in to post a comment.