Curious About The 1941 French Colonial Pstamps.........

Hi,
A while back I got the new set of the Scott's Part 2 International pages, which replaced a 1950 version. I recently completed moving all the stamps to the new pages - not an easy task.

Anyway, I noticed that "new" stamps - 1941 sets usually of 3)appeared for many of the French Colonies. These are mostly of like design, semi-postals, and for French Guiana it is Scott's B9-11. In many cases, they are the only stamps on a new page.

What I find "odd" is that none of these appeared in Scott's earlier Part 2 versions - and I confess I've never seen them before.

I wonder why they "suddenly" appeared? And, were they offered in sets, or ???

Okay, I can't help myself.

Voilà.

Do you mean the charity stamps issued by the Vichy government? Despite being available in France, these and various other Vichy issues were not actually used in the colonies for which they were supposedly produced, as Vichy didn't control those colonies. They're catalogued by Yvert and Maury. Gibbons used simply to refer to them, rather than listing and pricing them (and may still do).

I wonder why Scott decided to suddenly include them in the newer multipart international albums?

Perhaps it's shifted its position on including them in its catalogue - not having one, I can't check!

You can pick these up pretty cheaply, by the way, unlike one or two of the French omnibus issues.

From the link I posted:

In his editor's letter at the beginning of the 2004 edition of Vol. 2 of the Scott standard catalog, Scott catalog editor James E. Kloetzel discussed the rationale for adding these stamps to the listings: "These issues were prepared by the French authorities and were intended to be placed on sale in the colonies when Vichy control was established. Of course, most of the empire remained in Allied hands, and the majority of these stamps, issued during 1942-44, were sold in Paris but never reached the colonies. Because of this, most of these issues have been treated as 'prepared but not issued' items and have not been listed by Scott.

"Over the years, exceptions were made, and some items were listed, while most were not. The Scott editors decided that the best approach would be to list all of these issues, with appropriate explanatory notes."