New Zealand: King George V Issues

Because NZ governed Samoa under League of Nations Mandate from 1919 when Germany forfeited her colonies by the Treaty of Versailles following WWI , the same stamps also occur overprinted SAMOA. Used pairs are difficult to obtain.

I have managed to gather several of these but there are one or two values I still need used.
I believe the pairs occur across the middle two rows of the sheet.

The King Edward VII stamps had only been on issue for six months when he died in 1910 and King George V ascended the throne. It was quickly decided that a new set of stamps should replace the Edward VII stamps, but it was five years before the new set was issued. There were various reasons for the five year delay - difficulty finding a designer, difficulty sourcing appropriate inks, and the perfectionist nature of the then Postmaster-General Sir Heaton Rhodes, himself a keen philatelist. Rhodes was keen to return to the simplicity of the 1855 Chalon Heads and the English 1840 penny black and twopence blue stamps.

Unlike previous issues, recess and surface printings were issued from the start, the surface printings used to reduce printing costs of lower value stamps.

The initial issue contained the 1½d, 2d violet, 2½d, 3d, 4d yellow, 4½d, 6d, 7½d, 9d and 1/- stamps. The 1½d, 4½d and 7½d stamps were new values introduced for parcel post and it was not thought necessary to have 5d and 8d values. All the careful planning came unstuck when a halfpenny tax was imposed on all mail other than newspapers during the First World War. As the new issue did not have 5d or 8d stamps, the Edward VII issue stamps continued in use until 1922 when 5d and 8d recess print stamps were finally introduced. However, within a week of issue of the 8d blue it was realised that the colour was too easily confused with the 2½d stamp, so the stamp was reprinted brown as the 7½d brown stamp had been withdrawn by that stage. This ought to have made the 8d blue stamp very rare, but pressure from stamp collectors forced the post office to continue selling the stamps.

In 1915 the tax on receipts was increased to 2d. The 2d violet stamp was too dark for pen cancellations to show up, and so the colours of the 2d violet and 4d yellow were swapped in 1916. Many used copies of the 4d yellow were cancelled after it was withdrawn and 1915 cancellations are hard to find.

1915 - 1930 Definitives - Recess Printed



NB: Above image from the web. It includes a few shades but is also missing the 8d brown!




Dave

And the two 'Official' 1915 Sets - Recess & Surface printed :





NB: Images from the web



Dave

1923 Map Stamp




In 1923 the New Zealand Government decided that it was time to restore universal penny postage following its suspension in 1915. The map stamp was issued to commemorate this. Strangely, however, the one penny dominion remained on sale and continued to be used after the map stamp was withdrawn from sale.

The map stamp was the first and only stamp impression to appear preprinted on postal stationery until the 1980s.


Acknowledgement to the stampsnz.com website for the above info.




Dave

1926 KGV Admirals



By 1924 the demand for two and three shilling stamps was high enough that it was worth producing new stamps rather than using 'Duty' stamps of those values. It was also decided to replace the one penny dominion with a new stamp as the plate needed replacing and the universal postage design had been in use for twenty-five years.

Prior Governor-General Viscount Jellicoe had been the commander of the British fleet at the Battle of Jutland in 1916, and so it was decided that the two and three shilling stamps would feature a portrait of King George V as Admiral of the Fleet. However, General Sir Charles Fergusson had succeeded Viscount Jellicoe as Governor-General and as he was a distinguished soldier and so the penny stamp depicts King George V in the uniform of a Field Marshall.


Acknowledgement to the stampsnz.com website for the above info.



Dave

Various Health and Airmail sets were issued over the coming few years and I won't add them here as they can be placed into their own respective threads in the 'Back-of-Book' sub-board.
Also various Postal Fiscal 'Arms' stamps were issued and likewise they can also be found (when produced) in the 'Back-of-Book' sub-board.

The 1935 Pictorial Definitives came out in 1935, during the reign of KGV, but I will not include them here as they have their own dedicated thread and covered the reigns of both KGV & KGVI.



Dave

1936 ANZAC Set





These stamps commemorated the twenty first anniversary of the landing of Australian and New Zealand soldiers at Gallipoli during the First World War in April 1915.

½d, 1d

The design was by L.C. Mitchell and the plates were produced and the stamps printed by the Australian Note and Stamp Printer in Melbourne.

The stamps were similar to the Health stamps in that the ½d stamp cost 1d and the 1d stamp 2d with the extra money going to the NZRSA (New Zealand Returned Soldiers' Association).

The paper was Wiggins Teape with the NZ and star watermark and the perforation was 11. The plates had 192 stamps in four panes of 48 while the issued sheets had 48 stamps in 6 rows of 8. The plate number appeared once in the corner of each sheet of 48, with its position differing in each of the four panes.

The stamps were issued on 27 April 1936 and withdrawn from sale on 20 June 1936.

The total numbers sold were:  ½d: 1,840,810    1d: 1,179,218



Dave

From Wikipedia :


George V (George Frederick Ernest Albert; 3 June 1865 – 20 January 1936) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 until his death in 1936.

George was born during the reign of his paternal grandmother, Queen Victoria, as the second son of the Prince and Princess of Wales (later King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra). He was third in the line of succession to the British throne behind his father and his elder brother, Prince Albert Victor. From 1877 to 1892, George served in the Royal Navy, until his elder brother's unexpected death in January 1892 put him directly in line for the throne. The next year, George married his brother's fiancée, Princess Victoria Mary of Teck, and they had six children. When Queen Victoria died in 1901, George's father ascended the throne as Edward VII, and George was created Prince of Wales. He became king-emperor on his father's death in 1910.

George's reign saw the rise of socialism, communism, fascism, Irish republicanism, and the Indian independence movement, all of which radically changed the political landscape of the British Empire, which itself reached its territorial peak by the beginning of the 1920s. The Parliament Act 1911 established the supremacy of the elected British House of Commons over the unelected House of Lords.

As a result of the First World War (1914–1918), the empires of his first cousins Nicholas II of Russia and Wilhelm II of Germany fell, while the British Empire expanded to its greatest effective extent. In 1917, George became the first monarch of the House of Windsor, which he renamed from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha as a result of anti-German public sentiment. He appointed the first Labour ministry in 1924, and the 1931 Statute of Westminster recognised the Empire's Dominions as separate, independent states within the British Commonwealth of Nations.

George suffered from smoking-related health problems during his later reign. On his death in January 1936, he was succeeded by his eldest son, Edward VIII. Edward abdicated in December of that year and was succeeded by his younger brother Albert, who took the regnal name George VI.



Dave