Channel Islands and Isle of Man Stamps - Issued 1969 to Date
Guernsey and Jersey were given Postal Administration in 1969 and were followed by the Isle of Man in 1973. In 1983 Guernsey started to issue stamps for use on Alderney as well.
Guernsey and Jersey did War Time issues and details of these can be found in the regional section of this site.
Since their Postal administration they have become a very popular collecting area, mainly for issuing superb topical and thematic stamps. They have not been confined to regulations in the same way that Royal Mail have or probably more to the point, in the way that jobs worths in Royal Mail insist on sticking to the rules no matter how daft.
A classic example is fine used stamps. If you want a fine used Commemorative set of British stamps, they rules say that you can not just take them into a Post Office and have them postmarked. Nor can you order fine used stamps from the Bureau. You basically have to have someone post them to you with all the dangers entailed trying to get a nice postmark. The Channel Islands and Isle of Man are not so daft. You can order fine used CTO (cancelled to Order) and that is what you get. Same for first day Covers, you can order back issues of any cover as long as it is in stock or the stamps are still on sale. Not so, our Royal Mail. Missed the day of issue, tough!
Most of the topics that have been produced on the Islands stamps are very popular, Flowers, Birds, Planes and Ships to name a few and most issues are very colourful.
The Isle of Man also cottoned on to the popularity of The Lord of The Rings trilogy of Films and was the first to have a set issued for Harry Potter, 3 years before our own Royal Mail thought of jumping on the gravy train.
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