BIRTHDAY STAMPS

Evening Star, Issue 20193, 5 June 1929, Page 12

BIRTHDAY STAMPS

KHEDIVE’S PRESENT TO SON The Khedive, King Fuad, paid his little sou a very pretty compliment on his ninth birthday, February 11. lie ordered the postal officials to prepare Jour stamps of tho value «t 5 mills, 10, 15, and 20 mills bearing the portrait of the little Prince Farouk as part of the design. The compliment was as delightful as it was unique, lor no other prince has had a similar honour paid him. But this is not to say that birthday stamps are unknown to philately. Tho Argentine postal authorities make rather a habit of remembering the centenaries of their great men. In 1911 they began with the centenary of President Sarmicnto; seven years later it was tho turn of their PostmasterGeneral, Dr Juan Puiol, and in February, 1926, it was Rivadaria’s centenary whose portrait appears on the stamps of 1864, the 5-cent red, 10-cent green, and 15-cent blue, for which you would have to pay about £250 for unused specimens and about £IOO for the used ones. . , ~ • Two rulers have had their eightieth birthday celebrated with an issue of stamps. Frincis Joseph of Austria was one, his near neighbour, Prince John of Liechtenstein, the other, but a space of fifteen years; separated the two issues. The Austrian issue achieved ds effect with an economy of means; they took the designs then in use, dated them on the head and foot, and added a miniature portrait gallery to your albums which would cost you a £5 note. The Liechtenstein issue to celebrate Prince John’s birthday was a much more modest affair. lliere were three stamps in tho set instead of seventeen, they were normal in size, but they contrived a double debt to pay, for they franked one’s correspondence and added a mite to local charity. Charity, too, benefited from the beautifully engraved set which the Swedish Post Office issued at the end or last year to celebrate tho seventieth birthday of King Gustav V. The set of bye was the country’s birthday present to their sovereign, and it was by his express desire that the proceeds went to a medical research fund. The only ruler to have one birthday stamp was the Khedive himself, and that was issued three years ago. It is a three-quarter length portrait, but m spite of the fact that the stamp is larger than usual the figure is dwarfed by the frame. In common with the latest birthday stamps, its reproduction is very fine indeed, but the best me.cbnnical methods cannot atone loi faulty design.