Nigeria Stamp Sheets

Stamp sheets are slightly hypnotic. I’ve recently found a few Nigeria stamp sheets and am expanding my collecting to include them.

Like many of us, I am fascinated by regularity. When you see one red VW beetle that’s not especially remarkable. But 20 of them in a row at a show is much more interesting. I suspect many of us stamp collectors and philatelists have this tendency to like repetition of the same design again and again.

Stamp collections don’t have to be all different. In fact we often display a whole series of the same design together and this particularly applies to issues of the British Commonwealth. So  a page of George V stamps of all different colours, values and shades but the same design look very pleasing to the eye. The design runs like a theme through the page, tying together the variations and making it mean something to us. Perhaps that’s a bit fanciful…

Recently I’ve come across a few Nigeria stamp sheets. Now, you can buy sheets of some African countries quite easily and they’re not expensive.

But Nigeria has always been a bit difficult, not issuing many stamps each year and so not many relatively modern issues are easily available. Which of course makes it more interesting to rummage about and find those little gems hiding in the dirt.

Hides & Skins SG280a 1 Kobo Stamp Sheet

 

I came across this sheet recently for a very reasonable price and it’s in very good condition with no real gum toning and no tears. It is folded horizontally in two places but overall its a very nice and pretty scarce item for Nigeria.

It’s the “Hides and Skins” one kobo with the left hand imprint 5.25mm long and I think this is light emerald foliage and deep chocolate hides. So it’s the photogravure printed issue and SG280a, released on the 2nd April 1973.

I have the whole sheet, but my scanner isn’t wide enough to show the entire width, so I’ve had to figure out how to stitch two scans together. That has gone pretty well and I’ve put a black border to make them stand out better.

Deciding how best to store and display sheets like this has been an interesting exercise. I have Lighthouse folders with ring fastenings so I’ve had to look carefully for the right size sheets.

In the end I settled on LB sheets which are big enough to take these Nigeria stamp sheets without folding them.

 

Queen Amina of Zaria SG331 5 Kobo Stamp Sheet

I picked up this nice sheet, which has only a small tear on one perforation line and a little gum toning.

 

 

Natural Gas Tanks SG291 2 Kobo stamp sheet.

This sheet was bought from an eBay seller who doesn’t normally sell stamps so wasn’t as well described as it might be.

One side of the selvedge has separated almost entirely and there are one or two more tears along perforations.

However it’s a very nice colourful sheet and will look good in a display sheet.