The Daily Brunei Resources

If you just take a glance at these stamps from my collection, you would not have noticed anything different. Just ordinary used Brunei stamps. They are old though. The 1 cent was issued in 1908 and the 5 cent was issued in 1916. Look closely. Look at the postmarks. Now you can see. The 5 cent stamp was postmarked Labuan on 9 November 1922. The 1 cent was postmarked Kingstown on 6 September 1910. You all know where Labuan is. Kingstown? That's somewhere in the West Indies. Theory? Probably the stamps when affixed to the envelope escaped from being postmarked in Brunei but when it landed in Labuan, the postmaster there affixed the cancellation so that the stamp can not be used. Similarly with the Kingstown postmark. The other interesting bit was that someone in Brunei wrote a letter to someone in Kingstown. If the stamp can talk, what interesting tales can it have.

On the Friday (23rd February) just before the 23rd National Day celebrations this year, the Postal Services Department released the new Brunei definitive stamps. Not many people seemed to have realised it but then in the era of the internet and skype, not that many Bruneians used the traditional communication methods anymore such as letter writing. As for me, other than for sending out Hari Raya cards, Christmas cards or Chinese New Year cards, I don't remember any other times I actually buy postage stamps. It was 10 years ago when the last design was released. For the postage stamps knowledge challenged, definitive stamps are the stamps which are always available at the post offices as compared to commemorative stamps which are issued occassionally which the post offices will stop selling once their stocks run out. Definitive stamps are by design changed only if the designs have become too old or in Brunei's case, there are changes to the photographs of His Majesty. The design...

I thought I will follow up on my brunei stamp history to correct my earlier posting on Brunei stamp. In my previous posting I noted that "...it wasn't until 1952 before the government issued the first Brunei stamps with the picture of His Majesty Sultan Haji Omar Ali Saiffudien, the 28th Sultan thus beginning the modern era of Brunei stamps..." However I have since discovered that this is not so. I found two sets of stamps which were among the first to be slightly different from the designs of 1895, 1906 and 1924. The Brunei philatelic history is relatively short. The first set of stamps were released in 1895 called the Brunei Locals. The second set of stamps were those of the Labuan Colony overprinted with the word "Brunei" issued in 1906 because the Brunei stamps were 'lost' in Singapore. It wasn't until 1907 when the Brunei 'River Type' stamps arrived. In 1924, a new design with a view of the Kampung Ayer was released. (All the stamps can...