David Livingstone Commemorative Stamps

A storm, undetected by most, has been gathering in Scotland in the past few months, with an ever growing rift appearing within the Scottish Philatelic Society, all because of some cute panda bears. And why?

The year 2013 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of David Livingstone, a famous Scotsman. This anniversary was unfortunately deemed unworthy of a Royal Mail special stamp, disappointing his devotees who had to make do with an expensive commemorative Smilers sheet.

And if that was not bad enough, the Scots themselves opted to disregard Livingstone's anniversary, choosing the centenary of the Edinburgh Zoo as the main theme of all special items prepared for the annual Scottish Congress. And that is how we came to have pandas on post-as-you-go sheetlets and postmarks, and penguins on the special cover. Below you can see the unadopted first essay.

In response, Livingstone devotees issued a special booklet on their man, put together by Mr. Peter J. Westwood (who incidentally, was the designer of above shown penguin cover) with the participation and assistance of the nation's main Livingstone expert.

commemorative stamp

The booklet tells the story of Livingstone's life and lists the main stamp issues dealing with certain parts of his life, serving as a good starting point for a thematic collection on Livingstone. The booklet includes examples on stamps of Livingstone's many "hats" - the Missionary, the Explorer, the Medicine Man and the Anti-Slavery Messenger.
 

The booklet also includes a recent rarity - the 2013 Zambia miniature sheet celebrating the 200th birth anniversary. 

The original design (again by Mr. Westwood), was that of a single stamp in a miniature sheet, but Zambia changed it into four high value stamps. The sheet has been officially produced and issued, but other than that it is completely shrouded in mystery. There was a single appearance of this sheet on eBay once, only to disappear soon after, and it has not been heard of since. Rumor is that there are only about four copies of this sheet in Britain.