Curiosity Question - New Zealand Semi-Postals

I am breaking down an extensive New Zealand collection for remounting in my Palo hingeless albums and noticed a plethora of semi-postal stamps. I count over 90 issued between 1929 and 1975 which, together with the associated miniature sheets, take up 30 pages in my album. That strikes me as quite a lot, although I confess I'm not familiar with many countries' history in this area. Is this indeed unusual and, if so, are there particular reasons why New Zealand would issue so many?

Just curious. Thanks for any light that anyone may shed on this.

No idea about New Zealand, but the Netherlands issued quite a lot also in that era. It was used as a money making support for charity, like the Red Cross, children's welfare etc.


Peter

Germany and Belgium, too. It works in those places as a convenient and inexpensive way to give to charities. And it's not just collectors buying them, since we have seen a lot of them being used.

The New Zealand charity stamps became an annual ritual. The "smiling boys" issue is the most valuable, I think. I don't know why Scott chooses to separate charity issues in its catalogues and albums (or call them "semi-postal"), as this isn't normal practice elsewhere.

While some countries issue semi-postal stamps to benefit various charities, sports training/administration, philatelic shows and/or disaster relief, New Zealand has focused on children's health.

I found this paper from the Te Papa Museum of New Zealand focusing on the Smiling Boys and also delving into Health and Charity stamps in general. It is very well written and interesting, I think.

https://www.tepapa.govt.nz/sites/de....stocker.pdf

Thanks for all your comments. The Scott catalogue does show the "smiling boys" as the most valuable, with almost all the rest of the issues after 1935 being pretty low value. My Palo album, as well as the Scott catalogue obviously, does separate these issues into the "back of the book" section, whereas the raggedly Minkus album that I rescued them from includes them with all of the other regular issues each year (as well as airmail stamps). And that is an interesting article on the "smiling boys" as well as other health issues - appreciate it, rogdcam.

I tried to post my scans of the stamps mounted for the period 1929-1975, showing the annual health issues, but the scans didn't look so good after resizing them for the uploader and the uploader wouldn't work anyway even though the scans were well below 200kb. Someday I'll figure it out.

You might be interested in this announcement from NZ Post in 2017, when they decided to discontinue the annual Children's Health stamps.

"In 1929 New Zealand Post worked with Children's Health Camps - now Stand Children's Services (Stand) - to create an annual stamp issue to help New Zealand's most at risk children.

Each issue had a different theme, with the aim to educate all New Zealand children and their families about good health. A donation from the sale of each stamp provided critical funding for the Children's Health Camps across New Zealand.

In recent times, mail volumes have been in decline and this has been reflected in the number of Children's Health stamps sold. Unfortunately, this has led to it no longer being financially viable for New Zealand Post and Stand to administer this stamp issue.

As a result, this annual stamp issue will no longer be continued, however New Zealand Post will continue to support the great work that Stand does by other means. September 2016 was the last date of issue for Children's Health Camp stamps, however this issue is still on sale here until 6 September 2017."

The first stamp, issued in 1929, was inscribed Help Stamp Out Tuberculosis.

22crows - thanks for the additional info. I have only reached the 1980s in terms of remounting my collection and my older Scott catalogue only shows through 2013, so I was wondering whether/when the issuance of these types of stamps had ceased.