NEW STAMPS

Hokitika Guardian, 28 December 1929, Page 6

NEW STAMPS

JAPANESE AIR ROST ISSUE

LONDON, December 11

New postage stamps of picturesque design have been taken into use by tile Austrian post office. In place of the weird impressionist types which characterised the series of 1925, the new stamps present miniature views of famous places of beauty in Austria and Tirol, strikingly executed in steel engraving by Professor Rudolf Junk, of the State Printing Works Vienna after the designs of the artists Franz Retzl and Ferdinand Schirnbock. The former issue will continue to be valid for postage until the end of the present year. The precursor of the annual crop of Christmas charity postage stamps lias arrived from Germany in the form of a set of five special stamps emblazoned with the arms of various town and states and sold at a trifling premium upon face value. They will remain on sale at post offices throughout Germany until January 15 next, and will continue to be accepted in payment of postage until April 30, 1030. To the long series of commemorative postage stamps emanating from Albania there has recently been added ine in celebration of the thirty-fifth birthday of King Ahmed Zogu in the form of 5000 sets of the stamps bearing his likeness origmtlly issued in 1.9*6; distinguished by the overprint. “Rrolt Mbreti” (Long Live the King!) followed by the date, “8 x 1929.” The Argentine stamps commemorating the 437th. anniversary of the discovery of America (T)i a de a Raza) prove to be rather poorly printed lithographs. From the United States comes a particular two-cents postage stamp, also issued on October 12th. in honour of the official inauguration of the completed canal system on the Ohio River. Recess printed in traverse rectangular format and rose-carmine, it depicts a canal' lock beneath the inscription “Ohio River Canalisation,” with the dates 1875-1929 in the upper spandrels.

The latest addition to the world’s air post stamps comprises four values for use in the Japanese air service. They were introduced on October 6th. in a i.igldv-effective design of an aeroplane dying over Lake Hakone and'a distant view of Fujiyama and Mount Ashinoko. Denmark’s new air stamps are also to hand in the general type of 1925 showing a ploughman watching an aeroplane in the sky. A stamp of 3s denomination is now included in the contemporary postage and revenue series of Northern Rhodesia. Changes are rumoured to be impending in the postage stamps of the British West Indian Colonies of St. Vincent, Turks and Caicos Islands, and Virgin Islands. The postage stamps of King Ibn Saud, which until now have been inscribed entirely in Arabic characters, are appearing in a modified version of the “Thoughra” type of 1927.