Description

— New stock added —

Gugh Island Royal Silver Wedding perforate set of two values (15p and 25p), issued on 20 November 1972 and depicting flower tying.

Listed in Butt’s 2023 Gugh Island catalogue as numbers G13-G14.

U/M / Unmounted Mint / MNH / Mint Never Hinged.

About Gugh

Pronounced "keow", Gugh is one of the Isles of Scilly, connected to St Agnes by a sandy bar or tombolo. The island is just 1 km wide and 0.5 km long, and currently has a population of three people.

Not a great deal has tended to be known about the origins of Gugh Island's stamps, but an excellent new 2023 catalogue by Keith Butt - who was involved in setting up the first issues - fills that gap, listing all the labels from 1971 to 1981, including prices, and providing some much-needed background. The catalogue explains that the Outer Island Agents issues produced during the 1971 postal strike were, in effect, a forerunner to the later Gugh Island issues, with the then-owner of Gugh reaching agreement in 1972 for the OIA to produce issues for the island.

While also sold as souvenirs, Butt's catalogue and our own research indicate that Gugh's 1970s issues were used as genuine local carriage labels for transporting mail to St Agnes, from where Royal Mail postage was necessary to continue the item's journey. We have seen examples used on postcards in the 1970s, cancelled with a "Gugh Island - Local Post" handstamp. Most of the stamps produced during this period covered topics or scenes related to the island.

Further Gugh Island stamps appeared between 1995 and 2008, but these are thought to have been produced by the businessman Clive Feigenbaum, branched off into more random topics - such as the FA Cup - and are not believed to have been sold on the island.