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LEN HUTTON was an accomplished cricketer. English fans cherish the record 364 runs he racked up in a Test match against Australia in 1938. It would not be unreasonable to surmise, however, that this feat is less remarked on in the Central African Republic (CAR), a former French colony with no cricketing pedigree. So it may seem odd that in 2016 the CAR issued a set of commemorative stamps to mark the centenary of Hutton’s birth—and odder still that French-speaking Niger and Portuguese-speaking Mozambique did the same (see picture).
The practice, it seems, is not restricted to bygone English cricketers. Jan Brueghel the Elder died 395 years ago in January, a milestone Sierra Leone’s postal authorities considered significant enough to warrant a philatelic tribute. Other African states seem to prefer Baroque music to Flemish art. It is just possible that the people of Guinea-Bissau might have let the 260th anniversary of the death of Johann Sebastian Bach slip by without much fanfare. Fortunately, their postal service was less remiss.
Stamp issues usually let countries celebrate national heroes. Yet there is a rationale for printing stamps of long-deceased foreigners. You would be hard pressed to walk out of a post office in Bangui, the CAR’s benighted capital, with a Hutton stamp. But collectors scouring the internet are willing to pay handsomely for such stuff. A set of Hutton stamps from the CAR fetches €15.50 ($18.50). Niger’s depiction of a besuited Hutton is sufficiently sought-after to command a €2 premium. This is a handy way for African states to boost revenues.
Genuine philatelists get prissy about this sort of thing. Stamps should be issued only to meet local demand, they insist. Yet targeting the collectors’ market is not new. Smaller and poorer countries have been at it for 70 years, notes Ian Harvey of the Royal Philatelic Society London. Even Britain’s august Royal Mail is accused of collector-gouging.
Still, there are signs that the practice is getting out of hand. In recent years several African countries have appointed a Lithuanian-based outfit called Stamperija to design and print their stamps. Stamperija, philatelists grumble, has flooded the market with tat. Collectors calculate that, with the help of Stamperija, Sierra Leone, with a population of 7.6m and a barely functioning postal service, churned out 1,566 different stamps last year, compared with 268 released by Britain and 139 by India.
Stamperija’s gaudy designs are not to everyone’s liking. And producing so many stamps can lead to mistakes. A set of Stamperija stamps issued in 2014 for the CAR turned out not to picture Marilyn Monroe, as planned, but a New York drag artist. Few of Stamperija’s clients seem bothered, though. “It is willing buyer, willing seller,” says a postal official in Sierra Leone. “So what’s the problem?”
This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline “Wait a minute Mr Postman”
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