Tonga Digs For Oil (Through

New Stamp And Coin Issues!)

Tonga has never been bashful about publicising its existence through the medium of the postage stamp. Stamp collectors can almost follow every event of pass ing interest in the realm by buying all the current issues. But now the kingdom has gone overboard and issued not only a set of stamps commemorating the first scientific search for oil (which has yet to be found), but a set of coins as well!

The Treasurer has placed into free circulation as legal tender exactly 10,000 previously uncircu lated pieces each of the 2 pa’anga (Tongan dollar) and 1 pa’anga regular coins of 1968, which bear the portrait of King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV. They have been countermarked “1969” by hand in Tonga, with the hopeful words “oil search” and an appropriate

addition of what appears to be an oil tower.

In further hope of a “golden flow” of oil for the kingdom, the coins have been gilded.

The design of the stamps is new but they follow the self-adhesive and free-form style of those stamps Tonga put out earlier last year to commemorate its partici pation in the South Pacific Games at Port Moresby. The complete series, postage and airmail, is limited to 10,000 sets. They depict an oil rig over a map of Tonga tupu.

Postage commemoratives are in 3 seniti, 7, 20, 25, and 35. Air mail commemoratives are in 9 seniti, 10, 24, 29 and 38. Official airmail commemoratives are in 90 seniti and 1.10 pa’anga. The total face value of the stamps is ST4.