A RARE display of Papua New Guinean stamps issued from 1952 to 2004 attracted a big crowd during a week-long stamps exhibition last week in Tacloban City, central Philippines.
The exhibit was in line with the celebration of Stamp Consciousness Month spearheaded by the Philippine Postal Office, the government postal agency.
An initiative of Lunesita Bacale-Mercado (right), a former expatriate-teacher who taught accounting for five years at the Lae Technical
College in Lae, PNG stamps exhibit featured the country’s various cultural heritages.
Among those displayed in 25 frames were stamps on PNG claypots, the Hiri Moale Festival 1999, native dwellings and ceremonial shields.
Mrs Bacale-Mercado told The National through email that she opted to exhibit the PNG stamps from among the thousands in her collection “due to the uniqueness of the subjects they portrayed”.
“I am just proud of PNG’s culture where I had been exposed for sometime (2000-2004) and am telling the world about it through stamps,” she said.
A stamp collector since five, she said she managed to collect those stamps with help from her Lae students and some friends in the Lae Filipino community.
Supported by the Tacloban City Philatelic Club, the exhibit was visited by local people, mostly students from various high schools in the city.