Stamps or covers that seem weird to you

You can’t have a FDC of an unissued stamp!

Hi Terri,
perhaps a consideration ?

They are not First day Covers, just an "artist's impression"
They are not dated, just "October 1969"

Nice one Terri, It is a very unusual choice of design , stamps on stamps on stamps on stamps. Like the infinity of reflections in a hall of mirrors

My choice for slightly weird stamp design has to be the definitive design of George V and George Vi for Basutoland, which depict a huge Nile crocodile and the mountains.

It seems odd,  since the tiny mountainous country is land locked in South Africa and has no crocodiles, and never has been home to these reptiles. 





the answer to the conundrum lies in the history of the Bantu tribes who migrated into this region from the North in their past. Their tribal totem was the Crocodile and lives on in tribal lore and religion centuries later, long after the Sotho people moved south of the Limpopo River which seems to be the southern limit of the crocodile. 

So what is odd to the Zoologist makes sense to the anthropology. 

I think stamps that display their dates of issue in the design make it much easier to find them in the catalog.

'Weird' is one of those words that can be very subjective. We all have our own sense of humour, sense of the ridiculous and sense of what is weird. 

Having said that, I do love the Korean tigers posted by Ryan ... although I'm not sure if they're weird or just delightfully playful. 

Something I've always thought weird is this set of joint issue stamps of Canada, Norway and Greenland celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Norwegian explorer Otto Sverdrup. They were issued as matching souvenir sheets in 2004. They were designed and engraved by Martin Mörk (4 colour litho plus 1 colour engraving). There were three stamp designs: Svendrup's portrait, his ship FRAN and a landing boat from the FRAN approaching an arctiic island. 

Norway issued the first two designs as stamps with the third printed as a tab. Greenland issued the first two as tabs and issued a stamp for the third one. Canada issued a stamp for the FRAN and used the other two designs as tabs on either side.



Norway Sc. 1398 and 1399



Greenland Sc. 426



Canada Sc. 2027

Canada actually issued two Otto Sverdrup stamps - both based on the design for the FRAN ... Sc. 2026: 49c and Sc. 2027i - $1.40 (the face value of the single stamp removed from the Sc. 2027 sheet).



It's probably just me but, why? Why not use one of the tabs for the 49c stamp? If Canada Post did that each denomination would have had a different design. That's what Norway did.

Anyway, I thought that was a bit weird. 

Other stamps that were weird for me, but not visually, when I learnt of them in 2000
were the ten, and thirty silbergroschen of PRUSSIA 1866

State Printing Works of Berlin
experiments in preventing stamp re-use

The stamps were printed by copper plates
however the engraving was in the POSITIVE.

The paper used was treated saturated in resin to give it transparency.

When printed, the stamp design showed through the paper as postive
This side was gummed.

So any attempt to remove the stamp would damage the design.

Found impractical, they were not issued to the public, but used by the post office for their internal use, and large parcels.

Source: World Stamp Digest 1939
Author : Frank A Godden
Reprinted from Godden's Gazette

Thanks gstamps
best images I have seen of those.
There are a few on ebay for sale.

Extraordinarily, these have been forged as well  (Evert Klaseboer)

As promised... Here are two inexpensive but amusing FDCs for the self-referential Jersey set that philatelia posted to kick off this thread. I love the multiple levels of recursive imagery on these, especially the first one: a first-day cover for a set of stamps bearing the image of their own first-day covers, cacheted with another image of that same first-day cover ....