Earth Summit
In 1992, the Earth Summit was held in Rio de Janeiro. That summit was meant to build cooperation among member states regarding environmental concerns such as pollution and toxic waste, climate changes, using alternative sources of energy, encouraging public transportation, availability of clean water, and protecting oceans from pollution and other abuses.
The Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) was created to monitor implementation of Summit agreements. It was decided that in five years a special session of the General Assembly would be held for the CSD to report on the progress since the summit. This was known as Earth Summit +5.
Pacific Philatelic
The Fédération Internationale de Philatélie is a world organization founded in 1926 for the promotion of stamp collecting and other aspects of philately. Among other activities, they sponsor International Philatelic Exhibitions (IPEX) in countries around the world. The heading of the overprint on the bottom of this souvenir sheet says, Pacific 97.
The U.S. IPEX stamp shows are held every ten years – with the previous one held in 1986 – and usually on the east coast of the U.S. This particular stamp show was held in San Francisco at the Moscone Center and in 1997, eleven years after the previous show. They did so to align the show with the one-hundred fiftieth anniversary of the issuance of the first stamps by the U.S. For both of those events, the U.S. Post Office issued a souvenir sheet that was to be sold only at the stamp show depicting the first two stamps, as well as two triangle stamps – a first for the U.S.
I guess to get in on the fun, the U.N. did an overprint of the Earth Summit +5 souvenir sheet with an overprint and sold them only at the show in San Francisco. They usually have a booth at these shows. I’ve been to one and visited their booth.
Note
The souvenir sheet at the top was issued to bring attention to the Earth Summit +5, the special session of the General Assembley to review the progress made since the Summit in in 1992. There was a souvenir sheet issued for that event. See the Clean Oceans page.
The second set of four stamps on this page are basically the same stamps as in the souvenir sheet, but they come from a normal sheet of stamps. That’s common with U.N. souvenir sheets, to issue the stamps with the same design in both formats. What’s different here is that these stamps also have an extra border around them saying Earth Summit +5 since that’s not part of the stamp design from the sourvenir sheet, but on its selvage.
As a result of this overprinted souvenir sheet being sold only at the stamp show in San Francisco for those eleven days, there aren’t many of them available. It took me about nine months to find one for sale from a dealer in the U.S. I wish Leuchtturn would have put it on the previous page, though, with the one without the overprint. I should stop complaining about things like that. I do like Leuchtturn album pages very much. They do good work.
Stamp Details
The table below lists information about the stamps shown on this page of Lighthouse’s stamp album. For more details about a particular stamp, click on its description. That will take you to the related web page of Colnect.
spot |
own |
catalog |
subject |
description |
comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
✓ |
708 |
Environment & Development |
$1 (may 1997) |
||
✓ |
704 |
32c (may 1997) |
|||
✓ |
705 |
32c (may 1997) |
|||
✓ |
706 |
32c (may 1997) |
|||
✓ |
707 |
32c (may 1997) |
Footnotes
Spot refers to the postion of the stamp on the album page (e.g., 3.2 indicates row 3, position 2).
Amt. is an abbreviation for the face amount of the stamp.
Own indicates the stamp status: ✓ for unused; ✗ for used or canceled; ⭑ signifies I ordered one; ; ✨ indicates it was bought recently; ✠ means an auction bid is pending; and ◎ is used, and it costs too much for unused.
To search by catalog number, go to the search box and enter it in the catalog number box. However, it’s a bit broken; I need to fix it.
No Covers Found.