First Stamp Week For N.Z.

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32306, 26 May 1970, Page 14

First Stamp Week For N.Z.

New Zealand’s first Stamp Week will be held next month starting on June 22. To coincide with the week New Zealand will issue a new set of stamps to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the United Nations.

The organisers will put on the biggest stamp designing contest yet held in New Zealand; it will be open to all persons except commercial artists.

The week has been organised by the major stampdealing companies, retail companies and manufacturers of accessories to the postage stamp trade. The Post Office is also co-operating. More than 400 retailers throughout New Zealand

have said they will have window displays of stamps for the week. The issue of United Nations anniversary stamps will be made on June 24. The two stamps in the set will be a 3c green and blue showing the United Nations building and a 10c red and yellow with a tractor. The stamp-designing competition has six major prizes and more than 190 consolation prizes. Entry forms will be available from most bookshops and stamp dealers and the competition will officially open on June 22. Entries will close on July 14 at post offices throughout New Zealand.

The design must take some aspect of the New Zealand tourist trade. The judges will place more emphasis on the theme of the design than on its technical execution.

The week will be opened officially by Mr J. A. Mackay, who is Keeper of Stamps at the British Museum, London. In his care is the largest collection of stamps in the world, worth more than sloom.

Mr Mackay, who is also the editor-in-chief of the “New International Encyclopaedia of Stamps,” will arrive from Australia on June 20 and will visit Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. The week will deal with al! aspects of stamps, including the rapid rise in value of some of New Zealand’s stamps. Among these are the 1931 5d health stamp which is now worth $5O in good condition, the 1906 10jd Christchurch Exhibition stamp now worth $25, and more recently the 1960 2d Christmas stamp which is now worth $1.25. The history of New Zea-

land stamps will be traced, including the unusual 1893 series. This series was the first successfully issued by any country in the world with advertising on the reverse side.

Among the advertisements were those for "S. Myers and Co., Dentists, Christchurch,” who proclaimed that they used “Nitrous Oxide for Painless Extractions”; one for “W. Strange and Co.” the former Christchurch mercers and haberdashers; another for “Bonningtons Irish Moss”; and one for “Sunlight Soap,” the uses of which included “washing dogs and prize poultry.” The picture shows a collection of the 1893 Queen Victoria stamps and some of the advertisements which appeared on the reverse.