Stamps Issued In The Year 2000

I was looking for a new sideline collection. I didn't really want to look at a whole new country (especially one with expensive "classic era" stamps). I thought about a thematic collection, but wanted something finite so I wasn't going to be forever chasing new issues. I was unsure what to do for a while, but then I started looking through some odds and ends sitting in some long-ignored stockbook and it dawned on me - I had several issues from the year 2000 from a trip I took, so they were to be the first pieces of the new sideline.

Looking through the various volumes of Stanley Gibbons' "Stamps Of The World" there looked to be enough issues during the year to make it an interesting challenge, with nothing too expensive, although I did find an Argentinian Express Service stamp out of the main catalogue sequence catalogued at £50, and some of the long agency sets are in that sort of area if you add up all the Miniature Sheets too. (Although if SG ever get around to cataloguing the overprints from Benin, these will probably be way out of my budget).

I borrowed all 6 volumes in turn from our wonderful local libraries, and put together a spreadsheet of every issue listed. I was expecting about 8000 stamps but the eventual number was close to double that. Oh well, in for a penny... A "sideline" was turning into quite a large project!

Some points I noted immediately

• Many countries had celebrated the forthcoming millennium in 1999, but there were numerous issues in 2000 including almost the entire British program.
• 2000 was also a Holy Year, so about 20 countries celebrated that.
• It was the year of the Sydney Olympic and Paralympic Games, cause for many countries to issue stamps, topped off by the Australian "instant" stamps to celebrate their gold medal winning athletes, a concept re-used by Greece in 2004 and the UK in 2012. Very few countries issued for the Paralympics (Australia, Italy and a combined set for both games from Belgium)
• There was a world-wide omnibus entitled "Stampin' The Future" where countries issued between 1 and 4 stamps featuring children's paintings. I'm sure a collection of just these will make a nice few album pages.
• Other celebrations which were noted by multiple countries included the 100th birthday of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, the 100th anniversary of the first Zeppelin flight and a surprisingly high number of issues for the 50th anniversary of the World Meteorological Organisation.
• Agency issues for several countries were of course in full flow, endless sets of stamps with the subject matter completely irrelevant to the supposed issuing countries although fewer stamps than usual seem to have been consigned to the SG Appendix (although numerous "illegal" issues aren't of course recorded in SG at all)
• Major exhibitions - Stamp World 2000 London, Expo 2000 Hanover, and World Stamp Expo 2000 Anaheim all saw attending countries issue, often a recent Miniature Sheet with a commemorative overprint.
• Some countries produced issues to mark completely local affairs, mostly just picturing emblems, but I'm sure the Finno-Swedish Gymnastics Association Exhibition (Aland), 50th anniversary of the Dolores Sucre Lavayen College (Ecuador), 25th anniversary of the Kuwait Dental Association and the 20th anniversary of Blast Furnace "B" (Luxembourg) were all worthy of marking in a philatelic manner.
• General thematic sets of course abounded, birds, endangered species, flowers, fish, and tourist sights all competed to separate collectors from their money.
• The Europa theme was "Building Europe" and the common design used for many countries was a structure of yellow stars from the European Flag piled on top of one another.
• Timor-Leste (a.k.a. East Timor) joined the stamp issuing community with a modest 2-stamp inaugural issue, the UN forces provided a first issue specifically designed for use in Kosovo, and the first stamps especially for use by the International Olympic Committee were issued in Switzerland.

So, after a couple of years, I have about 27% of the stamps (all in unmounted mint condition). I've bought some year sets (France, Germany, Poland, USA) online and a lot more items piecemeal, online, in stamp shops or at Stampex etc. Oh, and I've set another target - to do as much as I can for a lot less than £1 per stamp. If I come across any in nicely used condition, or in presentation packs, gutter pairs or on FDCs, I'd keep them, but the primary focus is the UM singles.

Below, each country is linked to a specific page. On that page is a list of issues made by that country in 2000, with stamps I have shown in green. Then follows a scan of those items as they sit in my collection. The scan quality of most of these isn't that great at the moment, but I will improve that over time - so far I'm up to about Gibraltar in getting decent scans loaded.

Country by country

* indicates that no stamps are listed for that country in the most recent "Stamps of the World" that I have seen, or that SG haven't reached 2000 in that country's listing yet.

Note: I have used the word "country" as a synonym for "stamp issuing entity". I am well aware that some of the above aren't countries by any regular definition.

I don't really expect to "complete" this collection. There's an awful lot of stamps out there, some of which may be hard to source at a reasonable cost, and to be frank, I'm not getting any younger. Some countries' output doesn't inspire me to get them all either. It's bad enough to see listed over 400 items purporting to come from Antigua, but for another 200, mostly older issues, to be also overprinted for Barbuda takes the biscuit. A representative item or two may well do. The first target is to get at least one item from each country (221 so far), and see how we go from there.

Links!

Stanley Gibbons Stamps, catalogues, accessories etc.	Stampboards The world's biggest stamp collecting forum	BB Stamps Dealer in UK stamp issues	Stampworld worldwide online stamp catalogue
	COMMONWEALTH STAMPS OPINON
Norvic Philatelics Number One resource for news on new UK issues	Commonwealth Stamps Opinion News and (often strong) views on new issues from Commonwealth countries	Royal Mail Buy UK new issues direct

Acknowledgement

The thumbnail images on this page come from www.stampworld.com and will be replaced by my own images when time permits. Any images on individual country pages are already my scans of items in my possession.