COCOS ISLAND STAMPS

Evening Star, Issue 22252, 1 February 1936, Page 7

COCOS ISLAND STAMPS

Costa Rica has a surprise in store for stamp collectors. It is about to provide its romantic “ colony ” of Cocos Island with a full series of postage stamps. Cocos is the treasure island in tho Pacific (not to be confused with the Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean where the Sydney destroyed tho Emden in the Great War) which has lured a succession of seekers after the wealth supposed to have been buried there by pirates and buccaneers. Until last year the place was regarded as a kind of “ No-man’s Land,” but the British expedition of last summer, financed by a £75,000 company, got a shock when Costa Rica sent troops to evict them from the siland. The ostensible purpose in issuing the stamps (says tho ‘Observer’) is to make it clear to the world that Cocos Island belongs to Costa Rica. For many a day the bulk of the postal traffic will bo “ philatelic,” and already arrangements have been made to send “ firstday covers ” —envelopes posted on the first day of the issue—to many thousands of collectors.