GBLA – The Joint Stamp Issue and a Few Words on ASFE Literature
Peter Valdner (2026)
Collectors of ASFE, at least the more advanced ones, like uniformity in their collections. That is why uniform designs are particularly popular among them. For the stamps of the Great Bitter Lake Association, the first such designs were produced in 1967 by the very first GBLA stamp author – Captain Jiří Kudrna.
More followed. In the GBLA Encyclopaedia, I devoted an entire chapter to uniform designs; interested readers can find several issues there.
A more recent trend in stamp issuing is joint issues by several postal administrations. Few people know that GBLA was also a pioneer in this respect.
The year 1974 marked the thirtieth anniversaries of events at the end of the Second World War. Celebrations took place in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Poland; the commanders of the Bulgarian MS Vasil Levski, the Czechoslovak MS Lednice, and the Polish MS Djakarta joined in with stamp issues. They agreed to produce a joint issue depicting the respective ships and national flags. The stamps were designed by the master of the Bulgarian vessel.
The fate of the stamps differed. I do not know whether anyone in Bulgaria collects GBLA stamps, but I have not heard of anyone so far. If you know of someone, I would be glad to make their acquaintance.
The Polish stamp has a different story. As you know from the GBLA Catalogue, the Poles issued more GBLA stamps than the crews of the other twelve ships combined. Thus, in that extensive production, it has rather been lost.
By contrast, the Lednice stamp is probably the most sought-after GBLA stamp of all. In this article on my blog, I currently document the sale of seven examples on eBay. That represents 50% of all GBLA stamp sales I list there. Its price continues to rise.
I assume that the current trend of success for this MS Lednice stamp will continue, as it fits not only into collections of GBLA, ships, flags, or ASFE, but also into collections of Bohemica and Slovacica. Of all GBLA items, only the GBLA Catalogue has sold more copies on eBay. It has succeeded thanks to its value-for-money ratio.
Buyers have not been discouraged even by shipping costs. They know that the knowledge gained will repay their investment many times over. It is a similar case to the book by Santaeugenia Grau on the revolutionary overprints of Czechoslovakia 1944/45. Both belong to the basic toolkit of collectors of stamp-issuing entities, just like The Philatelic Atlas by Docent Marek, Čučin’s Zemstvos, Follansbee’s Mexico, Kehr’s Interpostals, or Koeppel & Manners’ Indian Fiscals.
However, while for GBLA stamps the key factor is mainly the difference in catalogue values (from £0.10 to £100, i.e. up to 100,000%), and the imitations by Dr Zappala—which inexperienced collectors sometimes buy at the price of genuine GBL stamps—are secondary (collectors of ASFE do need one, but must know how to choose), in the case of Czechoslovakia 1945 revolutionary overprints the problem lies in forgeries and fantasy overprints.
I have already mentioned that I know of two collector-investors from the Czech Republic who invested millions of CZK in fake revolutionary overprints of Czechoslovakia 1945. One has already disposed of the collection at a huge loss; the other will likely come onto the market sooner or later. And here, only Grau can help—unfortunately neither Holoubek nor Zvoníček, and certainly not the Internet or AI, whose information and translations sometimes remind me of the legendary humorous mistranslation Zeit im Bild = “time is money”.
Learning from one’s own mistakes is certainly the most effective method—but sometimes a very expensive one. Many collectors and investors, however, seem to be incorrigible.
