1980 Cambodian Postage Stamps-Full Set-Mint

While living in Bangkok 1974-78, working at Thai Airways HQ, I often visited a great stamp & coin shop (Sio Siah Kee) on New Road. By 1980 I had transferred back to THAI'S U.S. HQ and was making frequent trips back to Bangkok and visits to the New Road shop. On this particular visit the owner who was well connected across the Mekong said he had just received the first stamps issued in Cambodia since 1975. Vietnam had invaded and taken out Pol Pot. They printed the stamps in Hanoi as the first step in rebuilding the postal system in Cambodia. I bought a full set (4) in blocks of six (6). The stamps are very rare and seem to have fallen through the cracks of history.

Nice to have, but hardly rare. My 2004 SG South-East Asia lists a mint set @£37 - don't know how prices may have moved since then.

Agree. They have some value, and would find a home in my collection. But certainly not "rare". Thanks for posting these.

These are Cambodia 444-447 in Michel, catalog value 25 Euro's for a MNH set of singles.

Thanks for the input. I assumed the stamps to be rare as I've searched online for years and found almost none. They do have a good story though.

As so often, the greatest value lies in your memories of les temps perdus.

All it takes is one article in the philatelic press to have these removed from the catalogs and album publishers .

If it was as you say ---Viet Nam had invaded and they were printed in Hanoi if they were not aviable at the post office and no record they were used on any mail . Then they are labels .

Cambodian postal services resumed in 1980. These were thus the first stamps in use. Unlikely that Gibbons is going to remove them from its catalogue at this juncture.

They are listed in Scott, so were likely available for postal use.

That is not the flag of the country .

It would be better to call it "the occupation stamps of Viet Nam " Somebody needs to write a article in the philatelic press to get those stamps classified correctly .

Would this also apply to US Special Printings, some listed "Farley's", Canadian imperf "errors" and a multitude of WW stamps that could not be purchased over the counter and are not known postally used?

The answer to your question is each collector makes their own decision . I ran into this same question with my Spanish Civil War issues ,many never made it to the post office and unknown used .

As we all known ,stamp dealers will sell anything ,

Oh yeah. It's all about having a good story to make something "sexy".

The flag shown on the stamps was the flag of the People's Republic of Kampuchea 1979-1989. (Wikipedia)

Well, yeah, it's a mystery. And because the whole scene in 1979/80 was a total sh*t storm real evidence is hard to find. The Vietnamese found a country in complete shambles, with no government facilities working, including the postal service. Their efforts to put things back together were naturally a bit unsophisticated, but they started a crude postal system. These stamps being their first effort. My own information about the stamps is from two sources. One, the BKK stamp dealer who sold them to me, and two, a Vietnamese stamp collecting document found online that detailed the stamps' history. In 1980 the dealer had excellent sources across the Mekong and was told these were the new PRK stamps. In the second instance, the story was that at first there was no postal "system", so all mail from the PRK was routed back to HCMC for onward delivery. That may be why we see so few of these stamps, very few ever got out of the country. As the system improved, new and better stamps were printed. I have, this week, emailed Vietnam Post and Vietnam Stamp requesting more information on the stamps. It existed once when I researched many years ago. Anyway, that's all I know about the subject.

Here's the latest from Scott's 2025 - France and Colonies - Cambodia