United Nations adds four stamps to Flag series

By David Hartwig

The United Nations Postal Administration will continue its Flag series March 15 with four redesigned stamps.

The stamps will be issued at the March Party stamp show to be held Friday, March 15, through Sunday, March 17, at the Best Western Plus Hotel, 15471 Royalton Road, Strongsville, Ohio.

A first-day ceremony is scheduled for March 15 at noon.

Hosted by Charles Snee, senior editor of Linn’s Stamp News and Scott Stamp Monthly, and American Philatelic Society executive director Scott English, the ceremony will include UNPA representative Mike Pappas and March Party show chairman Rocco Caponi.

The set of four stamps depicts the flags of Lebanon, San Marino, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Yemen.

The United Nations Flag series originally ran from 1980 to 1989, depicting the flags of all U.N. member states at that time. The series resumed in 1997 to include the flags of new member states, show the flags of countries that had changed their names, show new flags, and show flags with design alterations.

The UNPA last issued stamps in the Flag series in 2020 (Scott 1245-1252). That set depicts the new flags of Belarus and Mauritania and the redesigned flags of Bahrain, Brazil, Cyprus, Dominica, Mongolia and Paraguay.

Like the previous stamps in this U.N. Flag series, the designs in the March 15 set are se-tenant (side-by-side) in blocks of four in panes of 16. The center block of the pane includes one each of the four stamps.

Each stamp is denominated $1.55 for use at U.N. headquarters in New York City.

On Sept. 15, 1988, the UNPA issued a 25¢ stamp (Scott 531) showing a common variation of the Lebanese flag, with the trunk and branches of the cedar of Lebanon in brown. The redesigned version in the March 15 Flag set has the entire tree in green to match the design of the national flag.

The March 15 issue also includes a redesign of a 33¢ San Marino flag stamp issued Feb. 5, 1999 (Scott 745). The updated version of the design features a lighter shade of blue in the lower half of the flag.

Although San Marino’s flag was adopted in the 19th century, it was not standardized until 2011.

After Venezuela adopted a new constitution in 1999, the Republic of Venezuela was replaced by the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The updated name is featured on a redesigned version of a UNPA 15¢ stamp issued Sept. 26, 1980 (Scott 335), which shows the country’s flag with the heading “Venezuela.”

The remaining stamp in the March 15 set shows the flag of Yemen, which was adopted when North Yemen (Yemen Arab Republic) and South Yemen (People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen) unified on May 22, 1990.

The United Nations issued a 22¢ stamp showing the flag of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen in 1987 (Scott 500) and a 25¢ stamp showing the flag of the Yemen Arab Republic in 1988 (532).

For ordering information for the Flag stamps, visit the UNPA website; email unpanyinquiries@un.org; or write to UNPA, Box 5900, Grand Central Station, New York, NY 10163-5900.

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