1-penny postage stamp depicting the coat of arms
Stellaland was a short-lived Boer republic from 1882 until 1885, located in an area of Bechuanaland (now Botswana), west of the then South African Republic.
The Stellaland Republic issued five values of postage stamps in February 1884. They were crudely printed, using the coat of arms as design, and inscribed "REPUBLIEK / STELLALAND". Unused examples can be had today for US$20, but genuinely used copies are much rarer and usually fetch hundreds of dollars.
Sometime in 1885, "TWEE" (Afrikaans for "two") was overprinted on a few of the 4-pence stamps, halving their values. These are quite rare, selling at auction for several thousand dollars when they appear. It is not clear whether they were official government issues, or privately produced, perhaps as political propaganda, since the use of stamps had recently become nearly universal worldwide.
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