India Gandhi stamps - 1969 Gandhi Birth Centenary issue FDC - Is stamp collection hobby is on decline.?

12/19/2011

By Ketankumar Patel.

Hello Gandhi Collectors,

1969 was 100th Birth Anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi and lot of countries honored him for his Human Rights,  Non-Violence and Peace achievements by issuing stamp of him.

India issued large quantity of 4 different Gandhi Stamps of  20 paisa, 75 paisa, 1 Rupee and 5 Rupees. All 4 stamps are with different theme, size and pictures on it.

Now if you see following screenshot from ebay, you will be surprised about pricing of this FDC with 4 stamps. It was sold for 0.25 UK pounds (39 US cents or 20 Rupees).

Now you can see that after 42+ years, FDC with 4 stamps whose face value was  Rs. 7  in 1969  was sold only for 20 Rs. This means that it did not appreciated if you count compound interest from 1969 - 2011.!!

It's very sad to see this kind of valuation of this FDC with very nice Gandhi Stamps on it.

I think such a low appreciation is due to large number of Gandhi Stamps and FDC issued in 1969.

But main reason I think is because stamps collections world wide is declining as there are other interesting hobbies  for kids such as video games, computer board games,  internet games (zynga, world of warcraft, internet chess, monopoly etc) and Internet communications such as email, social networking (facebook, linkedin) etc which will give them advance communications  and skills required to 21st century then old hobby like collection of just stamps and fdc.  I am seeing this trend also in collection of cards baseball, basketball, soccer etc. Also pen pals which was a great source of stamp collection is also obsolete because of internet social networking.

Also because of all Forgery, SCAM, FAKE stamps and philatelic materials I think less and less people are not interested in stamp collections and experienced philatelist is also growing up in age and there kids are less interested in stamps because of the all above reason.

So I think stamp collection hobby is declining including Gandhi Stamps.!!!

So before you buy any stamps or philatelic materials think twice what are going in to. Make sure you not accumulating someone junk as a treasure.!!


Want to know more about price decline in Gandhi stamps than please click following link.


http://gandhiphilately.blogspot.com/search/label/Gandhi%20stamp%20value%20declining

After reading above link, don't you think pricing of stamps are going down.

Again thanks for reading and  Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

Thanks

Ketankumar Patel.
Shill Bidding on Gandhi Stamps

My First year experience in Gandhi Philately.

My 100th blog post.

Gandhi Stamp Collecting is SCAM. My 3 year experience tell me Yes!!

USSR Gandhi 1969 FDC - Russia Gandhi FDC

Hello Gandhi collectors,

Recently I was researching about Gandhi FDC from Russia. To me it looks like this is not offical FDC from USSR postal service.

Reason for my assumption is

1) It is a regular rubber stamp instead of fancy pictorial cancel.
2) Also FDC cover is also very simple compare to the theme of the stamp.

Look at other 1968, 1969, 1970 FDC and you can see the difference. Following are some of the example of 1968/69/70. I also search for USSR FDC for 1982,1984 and it looks like it all has fancy cancel with appropriate theme or logo on it.

After looking to all this FDC it is private FDC or ?








If anyone of you have more information than please comment on this blog so we all can know more about this FDC.

Ketankumar Patel.

My First year experience in Gandhi Philately.
My 100th blog post.
Gandhi Stamp Collecting is SCAM. My 3 year experience tell me Yes!!
(My Son's blog http://usapostman.blogspot.com)

Click to see 50th Anniversary
Special Cancellation

1971 - Panama's Gandhi Stamp, a Surprising Philatelic Rarity

This article is courtesy of Jim Cross and Columbia/Panama Philatelic Society. http://www.copaphil.org/
This article is blogged with written permission obtained from Jim Cross, the author of the article. Minor portions are edited for this blog.

Panama had a relatively modest stamp issuing program until 1964. In the following four years the government contracted with a firm which agreed to provide stamps without cost in return for the rights to sell them to stamp dealers outside of Panama. The contractor was given the authority to design the stamps and most of the numerous stamps issued from 1964-1968 had sports, space or fine art themes which would sell well to thematic collectors.

When the contract was terminated Panama resumed it's relatively modest program of stamps issues. Most commemoratives were for events of importance to Panama. One exception was a 10 centesimos airmail stamp issued on 17th-Dec-1971 commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi (Sc C384).

The decree specified that 200,000 of the stamps would be printed. The choice of the denomination was interesting. At the time 10 centesimos paid the basic rate for a domestic airmail letter. The rate for an airmail letter to Central America and the United States was 13 centesimos, so if the Gandhi stamp was used on a letter to these destinations a 3 centesimos stamp had to be added. Relatively few letters were sent by domestic airmail in Panama and only a limited number of these domestic airmail covers have been saved. The majority of the available covers from this era are from mail to correspondence schools in Los Angeles and in Guatemala which had many Panamanian students and sold the envelopes from their correspondence to stamp dealers.

There were few stamp collectors in Panama during the time when the stamp was issued. While I was a specialized dealer in Latin American stamps I found that there were few requests for modern new issues from any Latin American country, I would estimate that no more than 5000 of the Gandhi stamps were sold mint to dealers and collectors and the number maybe quite a bit less than that. Over the three decades when I was a dealer, I seldom had more than two or three of these stamps in stock and those sold quickly.

Apparently the availability of the stamp of 1971 was not widely publicized and relatively few were purchased by collectors or dealers in India. Beginning about 1990 I began to receive periodic inquiries from India for these stamps.

There may have been official first day covers with the stamp, but I have never seen one. When I began collecting 1950-1985 Panama airmail covers, I was able to trade some older covers for a lot which originally came from the collection of David Leeds. It included two uses of the Gandhi stamps on cover. I found two other covers in dealers stocks. Then in August of this year(2007) I bought a specialized collection on Ebay. This was a collection of 205 covers organized by origin in Panama and almost all were from 1971 and 1972. Most were addressed to correspondence schools in Guatemala. This collection contained eight additional covers with franking with included a Gandhi stamp. It also included two pieces with the stamp clipped from airmail covers.

I selected three Gandhi for my collection and planned to sell the others on ebay. I had no idea what prices they would bring, but I suspected that there would be interest from thematic collectors, especially those in India. I listed the first cover with a starting bid of $9.99 and one of the two pieces with a starting bid of $0.99 what would happen. The listed cover had the Gandhi stamp on the back so it would probably have to be opened out for mounting in a collection. When the lots were listed the bidding started slowly, but a number of individuals were watching. There was a flurry of bidding during the last hour and the cover closed at $86.00 and piece sold for $29.00

Over the next two months I listed the other eight covers and the other item on piece. Later covers sold for even more than the first cover.

Attached below are some of the images that were sent to me by Jim Cross.

Gandhi 1969 - One Of A Kind - Germany Imperforate used on cover

Gandhi 1969 - Germany Imperforate used on Cover.
One of a kind.

To commemorate the centenary of Birth of Gandhi, Germany was one of the countries that had issued a postage stamp on Gandhi.

This is one of the rare examples of this stamp on a cover. It seems it is the only known usage of this on cover.

The imperforate stamp itself is quite common. However it does command a premium. I do not have the exact count of how many imperforate stamps are in existance. If anyone has a guesstimate, I would love to hear from you.

The last sale price of this item - Euros 3500.
and Ah!!! I do not own this item. From my perspective, I don't see any value addition in my Gandhi Collection.