AIDS on Stamps

Stamp Booklets

Many postal services that offer stamps in the form of booklets have taken advantage of the opportunity to promote AIDS awareness on the outside or inside covers. Sometimes the stamps are about AIDS, sometimes they are not. Either way, the larger surface provides an opportunity for greater detail and artistic expression than can be found on a single stamp.

I am sure there are other booklets featuring AIDS awareness information that I have not as of yet identified. Please e-mail me (with scans if possible) if you know of any others.

India

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Warning!

Indian stamp booklets that touch upon the subject of AIDS appear to suffer from a high degree of fraud including print runs beyond the stated number of copies, substituted stamps other than the intended subject matter, and unauthorizied use of the Indian Posts logo.

Prospective buyers should consider these booklets to be somewhere between a "cinderella" issue with limited value, and a worthless illegal issue.

If you choose to buy an Indian AIDS stamp booklet anyway, you should verify with the seller that the stamps inside are the 2006 Indian AIDS stamp, and not cats, otters, plants, goats, etc. The value of the stamps should total any sale price printed on the booklet. Furthermore, when buying such a booklet from Delcampe or eBay, you should check completed listings to make sure that the seller has not been dealing booklets with the non-AIDS stamps, which suggests their supplier may be providing fraudulent booklets to the dealer.

Buyers should be especially wary of buying the World AIDS Day booklet from December 1, 2008. Until such a time that a reputable stamp catalog determines the nature of the original authorized booklet (if there was one), these booklets are almost certainly fraudulent in nature.

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The AIDS stamp in the booklet is Scott 2176. In primary focus of the book is Charlton Heston. As with Elizabeth Taylor, precisely why India has Charleton Heston on a stamp booklet evades me. Can anyone enlighten me? One website I found stated only 500 copies of this booklet were printed to be distributed to participants at the Outram Club Stamp Show. A fair number of these are floating around the web, so either they were printed in excess of that number or someone commandeered them to sell over the Internet

There is also an identical version of the Charleton Heston booklet with a stamp of a leopard cat inside featuring the same denomination. Since Indian stamp booklets do sometimes have more than one set of stamps inside, it is possible that this is the same booklet as the one above and both stamps can be found inside.

India

September 3, 2008

Scott number unknown

The AIDS stamp in the booklet is Scott 2176. In primary focus of the booklet is the Indian film Saptapadi. Allegedly only 500 copies of this stamp booklet were printed.

India

December 1, 2008

Scott number unknown

There are two different stamps inside this booklet, an AIDS stamp (Scott 2176) and a stamp on breastfeeding. Supposedly only 250 copies of this booklet were printed, but an awful lot of these are selling all over the Internet.

Update: There are many of these selling on the Internet, many of which don't have the correct value of stamps enclosed. I have become convinced that the vast (!) majority of these Internet sales are forgeries. I am currently investigating this more closely, but until I learn more I recommend that collectors do not buy this stamp booklet because of the extremely high chance of buying a forgery.

The stamps inside this booklet have nothing to do with AIDS. If you intend to buy this booklet, make sure you are buying the correct one. The SACC # supplied above is 100% correct, but many sources will have incorrect (or at least different) numbers as so many booklets are similar in nature.

South Africa

April 1, 1999

Scott number unknown

South African Stamp Colour Catalog (SACC) #1191

The stamps inside this booklet are of the final picture. They are of Scott 1107-8 (SACC1191a-b). Small print next to the stamps indicates January 15, 1999, probably referring to some sort of print date. These stamps were never released in another booklet.

South Africa

November 24, 1999

Scott number unknown

South African Stamp Colour Catalog (SACC) #1244

The inside of this booklet is blank.

The stamps inside this booklet feature various plains animals (blue wildebeast, eland, impala, kudu, and waterbuck). Several variations on this booklet exist, so make sure you are buying the correct one. This one was released on November 24, 1999, although small type next to the stamps refers to August 7, 1998. The latter date is perhaps when the sheets inside were originally released, as they appear inside more than one stamp booklet similar to this one. If you intend to buy this booklet, make sure you are buying the correct one. The SACC # supplied above is 100% correct, but many sources will have incorrect (or at least different) numbers as so many booklets are similar in nature.

South Africa

November 29, 2002

Scott 1302

South African Stamp Colour Catalog (SACC) #1498

The stamps inside this booklet are Scott 1302a-j.

The AIDS stamp is Scott 4233. I am unsure of the booklet number. The fellow on the cover is Henri Dunant, founder of the Red Cross.