South Africa - Official Stamps

One of the most confusing areas for many collectors is identifying the stamps of South Africa that were issued in se-tenant pairs from 1926 until 1954. Compounding that when you turn to the back of the book and try to figure out the Official stamps it is almost impossible. There are no illustrations and although the catalogs do indicate the stamp that was overprinted it makes it very difficult. The overprints are all pretty similar and many collectors and dealers misidentify these stamps.

Some are quite valuable, and many are not. How do you tell the difference?

First of all, it helps if you have some understanding of the South African stamps. There are two basic groups:

King George V era stamps which were issued from 1926 until about 1932. These are inscribed SUIDAFRIKA (with no hyphen).

King George VI era stamps which were issued from 1933 until about 1954. These are inscribed SUID-AFRIKA (with a hyphen).

Naturally there are some exceptions like the 4d Brown and the 2/6 Blue and Brown issues which have no hyphen, but were issued after 1933, but this works for most of the issues.

But even after you have mastered the stamps, the Official overprints can be a challenge.

In an effort to aid with the identification, here are two web sites with the stamps identified by Stanley Gibbons and Scott numbers. Some of the images were contributed by interested collectors.