Wallpaper or Treasure?

After the four year Khmer Rouge break, in 1980 Cambodia once again issued postage stamps. For the next two decades, most Cambodian stamps were designed, printed and marketed by the Cuban stamp producing company - COPREFIL.

COPREFIL has been the official stamp producer of Benin, Cambodia, Congo, Cuba, Guinea, Laos and some other third world countries. COPREFIL pictorials share the problem of what all those agency-produced stamps encountered, they are widely considered "wallpaper" by serious collectors. Complaints include sales oriented themes, considerable printing quantity and rare postal use.

Well, wallpaper can be something. Tannu Touva (Tuva) is a classic example, Tuvan pictorials were cereal box freebies in the 1930s, now they are much sought after!

It is undeniable that themes like dogs and cars and chess flood, sadly they make you overlook those Cambodian related issues. Below is the "Khmer Culture" series 1996 set. It features Khmer dance masks, very cultural, very delightful.

I hope you didn't miss out épreuves de luxe, errors and proofs. Some stamp sets and souvenir sheets have imperforates. Never made available by Cambodia Post, they are likely to be proofs sneaked from COPREFIL. It is a challenge to collect them all. Below is a block of 4 uncut proof of the 1994 "80th Anniversary of the 1st Fly Performed by a Multimotor Plane" souvenir sheet. Print run of the souvenir sheet is only 39,150.

From time to time there are non-COPREFIL sets. Without sales agencies, generally they are not available to overseas collectors in mint and consequently scarcity turns them into high priced sets. In 1989 there came a Vietnamese printed 4v set showing 3 stone carved Asparas. The garish set has high face value for international mail, it is very easy to come by on covers, but not often seen in MNH.

In 1993, a 3v set was scheduled to mark the 40th anniversary of national independence. As COPREFIL shipped some of the stock to Cambodia for domestic use, suspiciously it was reported stolen during transit which forced Cambodia to declare the set illegal. Russia made a quick move of producing a new 3v set and presented to Cambodia as a gift. The new stamps share a same design of Angkor Wat, the proud national symbol. This set was only available in Cambodia, while the stolen set was only available outside Cambodia.

Inflation and shortage of stamps has forced Cambodia surcharge some of her old stock. The first surcharges appeared in 1986, more were made in 1991. Now they are gems.

Last of all, quantity sometimes suprises you in a nice way. Print run fuctuates. Usually it is below 200,000 while sometimes drops as low as the 1997 Heinrich Von Stephan set of 10,350.

Cambodian stamps give endless pleasure if you know how to appreciate them. In my future blog entries, you will be showed the unjustly neglected post 1979 Cambodian philately is much much more than a pile of pretty pictorials.