2001 80th Birth Anniversary of HM King Sihanouk

My very first blog entry is on the 80th Birth Anniversary of King Norodom Sihanouk set.

The lavish stamp set was issued on 31st October 2001 as the last issue of the year, and as the first issue after the contract between Cambodia and COPREFIL, the Cuban state owned stamp printer ended. With a total of 13 values, by far it is the largest set since Cambodia re-established her postal system in 1980.

HRH Norodom Sihanouk was reinstated as the king of Cambodia in 1993, he abdicted in October 2004 because of ill health. The set features images taken in different stages of the King's life.

Print run is unknown. There is no official FDC made for this issue, but it has a commemorative cachet showing the king's portrait above the inscription "1921-2001" for stamping. The cachet colour can be red, blue or black, all depends on the ink pad used by the postal clerk. Below is a private cover cancelled by this cachet. A cachet is not a postmark, so this CANNOT be regarded as a FDC.

The FDC shown at the very top of this page is private made. The eye catching postmarks on this FDC are not the conventional "CAMBODGE" metallic in French used at that time. This is a rubber postmark in English with a 3cm diameter.

During the UNTAC era (1992-1993), many UN officers requested for philatelic souvenirs at Phnom Penh Central Post Office (CPO). Unfortunately all those metallic postmarks at the desk were too worn for philatelic cancellation, therefore a rubber postmark was made and put into service at the CPO philatelic counter. So far I can find only very few samples of this rubber postmark on authentic non-philatelic commerical mail.

More than one rubber postmark existed at Phnom Penh CPO. The one on this FDC has 1mm space between the English letters and the big circular edge. To my observation so far, since 2003 the CPO has used another one with that spacing less than 1mm, letter and number fonts have boosted as well. There may have earlier samples of it, further research is needed.

This rubber postmark resembles the English postmark "PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA" with postcode 12000 which came into daily use in late 2006. The most significant difference between the two is, the Khmer letters on rubber postmark are more distant while those on metallic postmark are more compact, and metallic postmark bears postcode 12000 but the rubber one never.

Interesting enough, Phnom Penh CPO is not the only post office with postmarks in such format. In my collection there is a cover from Poipet (a town at the Khmer-Thai border) to Germany with an English postmark of the same type. The postmark measures 2.6cm in diameter, the date font is exactly the same as the Phnom Penh CPO large font rubber postmark.