A small selection of stamps added to PostBeeld’s stock recently can be seen below. Please note: for each country featured in the article, there will have been many more stamps added to PostBeeld’s freestampcatalogue.com website.
Vesak (or Wesak, Buddha Day) is the most sacred Buddhist festival – commemorating the birth, enlightenment (Nirvana), and passing (Parinirvana) of Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) all on the same day, traditionally the full moon in May. Celebrated globally, it involves temple visits, chanting, meditation, offering flowers/candles, releasing caged animals to symbolise liberation, and performing good deeds to honour the Buddha’s message of compassion and peace. The stamps above and below, from Sri Lanka, were issued to celebrate Vesak.
The portrait on this fine stamp set from Suriname depicts Wilhelmina, Queen of the Netherlands from 1890 until her abdication in 1948. She reigned for nearly 58 years, making her the longest-reigning monarch in Dutch history, as well as the longest-reigning female monarch outside the United Kingdom.
And here we have a fine 1948 definitive set with the portrait of Wilhelmina’s successor, Queen Juliana (1909-2004). In 1948 Suriname was a colony of the Netherlands. Queen Juliana reigned from 1948 to 1980.
Just added is a great selection of butterfly stamps, seen here some from Algeria and the Central African Republic.
Also many beautiful bird stamps, such as these from St.Vincent (1974) and the Cayman Islands (1975) – all mint, never hinged.
For horse lovers we have these beauties from Yugoslavia, issued in 1969.
Above is a quite rare set of airmail definitives. In 1947 the island of Curacao was part of what was then known as the Netherlands Antilles – a group of islands in the Caribbean Sea.
Saint Pierre and Miquelon is a French archipelago twenty-five kilometers south of the Canadian island of Newfoundland. Above and below are stamp strips showing panoramic views of two bays on the archipelago.
And here is a great five-stamp minisheet of French Southern and Antarctic Territories (TAAF) stamps – produced to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the TAAF. The territory includes the Crozet Islands, the Kerguelen Islands, and the Saint Paul and Amsterdam Islands in the southern Indian Ocean near 43°S, 67°E, along with Adélie Land, the sector of Antarctica claimed by France.
