Guyana, the only English-speaking country in South
America, has built up a dubious philatelic reputation since its independence in
1970. The first 10 years were uneventful enough, but after that, Guyana pursued
an issue policy that lifted eyebrows to stratospheric heights around the globe.
During the 1990s, the policy was mostly one of excess, with miniature sheets
and thematic issues on the wildest variety of subjects galore. Often these
issues were distressingly “gimmicky”: cut-to-shape sheets, gold and silver
embossing, etc. Your basic run-of-the-mill philatelic abuser.
During the second half of the 1980s, it was
orchids: Guyana issued an improbable number of stamps illustrating orchids
(taken from a famous illustrated book on Reichenbachia), including
surcharges, overprints, etc. Again, mercenary motives were probably at work
here.
But it was before that, during the first half of the
1980s, that Guyana first gained a reputation for philatelic eccentricity.
Starting in May 1981, Guyana almost ceased issuing new stamps altogether and
simply overprinted the apparently vast stocks of older issues again and again,
with new face values, new purposes or both. While it is again tempting to think
of this as aimed at collectors only, the truth was a little more complicated
than that.
Since its independence in 1970, Guyana had
been under the enlightened leadership of a man with the wonderful name of
Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham. Guyana was declared to be a “Co-operative
Republic” and various more or less eccentric economic policies were pursued,
including nationalization of several large industries.
Sadly, the oil crises of the 1970s had their
effect on Guyana’s economy as well. Briefly put, the country ran out of money,
crippled by a huge foreign debt and further handicapped by admirable but
expensive government policies. Under those circumstances it was quite
understandable that no more hard currency reserves could be spent on having
stamps printed abroad. Instead, existing stocks of stamps were simply
overprinted locally whenever the need for a new stamp issue arose.
More than half of these
overprinted/surcharged stamps used the “Flower” definitives of 1971-1976 (Scott
133-147) as their raw material. These were charming stamps, issued in sheets of
25 that made them very suitable for further overprinting. Four values exist in
two different perforations and the 25c stamp exists in two different designs
but other than that it’s an uncomplicated set of stamps. During the 1970s,
three stamps had been given a new face value by overprinting them – hardly
excessive – and most of the set had been overprinted “REVENUE ONLY” to serve as
revenue stamps in 1975.
But starting in 1981 with commemorative
surcharges to celebrate the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer,
the Guyana authorities went overprint-happy and issued over 300 different
overprints or combinations of overprints on the “Flower” definitives, mostly
during the first half of the 1980s. These issues fall roughly into three
groups:
- Revaluations.
Guyana was no stranger to inflation and postal rates increased during this
period, creating demand for stamps of higher face values.
- Commemorations.
Anything from Boy Scout Centenaries to religious festivals was honored
with a commemorative overprint.
- “Repurposing”
(if you’ll forgive me this ugly word). Postage stamps were turned into
Official stamps, or parcel post stamps, or official parcel post stamps and
then back into postage stamps again. And the revenue overprints of 1975
joined in the fun as well.
You might be forgiven if you think this was all
exploitative rubbish, designed to separate collectors from their hard-earned
cash, but the truth is that many or most of these issues were widely available
throughout Guyana, were used to frank mail and often filled a need, as the scarce Guyanese covers of this period show
What makes these issues so challenging to collect is that
identifying a given stamp correctly can take quite a slog through the catalogs,
and some catalogs are more helpful than others. I’ve found the Michel catalog
very useful since it not only notes on which stamp a given stamp was
overprinted, but also which subsequent overprints appeared on that stamp. Scott
collects overprints of similar appearance into groups, which is not always
helpful, and neither Scott nor Stanley Gibbons is very good at noting which
subsequent overprints appeared on a given stamp. In the end I produced my own
catalog of these issues, including a 3-catalog cross-reference and found it
time well spent.
As a taste of the madness, the $2 stamp
(Scott 146) is a good introduction. It exists with 13 different overprints (two
of them on previously unissued overprints). In addition, various further
overprints were later placed on 5 of these, creating 22 different stamps with
two overprints. For example, the $1.10 “Royal Wedding” surcharge (Scott 333)
exists with no fewer than 10 different “second generation” overprints. Finally,
on 9 occasions a third overprint was added to two previous overprints, so even
without trying hard there are 44 collectable stamps based on that $2 stamp
alone. I’ll also point out that the basic stamp exists in at least 2 very
different shades, creating plenty of room for further variety, and that overprint
varieties and errors do exist, although they are surprisingly scarce.
In all, I’ve found these stamps a pleasure to
collect, and finding them used on cover is a nice challenge. Gold-embossed
Mickey Mouse stamps, no thanks, but these overprinted “Flower” definitives are
a lot of serious philatelic fun.