1937 Coronation Stamps

I only had a few 1937 Coronation stamps in my collection before I chanced upon and won a very low priced auction of a large lot of these stamps.

In anticipation of that large lot, I started accumalating missing stamps from the collection. I have also started collecting FDCs/Covers of this set.

There are 202 stamps in the series issued by 58 colonies of the British Empire. Interestingly, no stamp was issued in India even though India was a British colony at that time.

Finally my large lot arrived. My collection of 1937 Coronation stamps is now respectable though still far from complete.

Each colony issued three stamps in the set in the list below. There were some exceptions of course, those are listed in parenthesis against the country name in the list below:

• Aden
• Antigua
• Ascension
• Bahamas
• Barbados
• Basutoland
• Bechuanaland
• Bermuda
• British Guiana
• British Honduras
• British Solomon islands
• Canada (1)
• Cayman islands
• Ceylon
• Cook islands
• Cyprus
• Dominica
• Falkland islands
• Fiji
• Gambia
• Gibraltar
• Gilbert and Ellice islands
• Gold coast
• Great Britain (1)
• Grenada
• Hong kong
• Jamaica
• Kenya Uganda and Tanganika
• Leeward Islands
• Malta
• Mauritius
• Monserrat
• Morocco Agencies (3) French Spanish and Tangier)
• Nauru (4)
• Newfoundland
• Newfoundland (11 in extended) 
• New guinea (4)
• New Zealand
• Nigeria
• Niue
• Northern Rhodesia
• Nyasaland
• Papua (4)
• Seychelles
• Sierra Leone
• Somaliland
• South Africa (5 pairs)
• South West Africa (8 Bilingual pairs)
• Southern Rhodesia (4)
• St Christopher and Nevis(St Kitts)
• St Helena
• St Lucia
• St Vincent
• Straits Settlements
• Swaziland
• Trinidad and Tobago
• Turks and Caicos
• Virgin islands

Modern Indian Used Stamps

I visited the Sunday market and met with the local stamp dealer. I asked for new Indian used stamps and he thrusted a large packet of unsorted stamps on paper and asked me to select the stamps I wanted. It was typical kiloware packet. When I asked how much for the whole packet, he refused to quote a price. What he told me was interesting and quite instinctively what I have been suspecting. He said hardly anyone one is posting letters, even fewer people are actually using stamps. Commemorative stamps hardly ever get used and most people have only mint stamps in their collection. And thus he wouldn't sell the whole packet but sell it per stamp. While it was still cheaper than most of what I have seen on eBay, he rather apologitically told me that he is now charging significantly more than what he used to charge earlier. Off-paper stamps were priced slightly higher. I am foreeing it harder to get used Indian stamps. And given the design of the stamps these days, we would soon end up with a market flooded with pictorial stamps that could be mistaken for Cinderallas.