I bought this beautiful set of 1954 Union of South Africa stamps on Ebay because I have very fond memories of them.
My mom had a stack of letters with the rhinoceros on— correspondence between her and my dad from before they got married.
I had the half-penny, one-penny and two-penny in my collection at the time. The higher denomination stamps were spectacularly out of reach for a young collector: very expensive to buy. The 10-shilling stamp depicts postage 240 times that of the half-penny stamp with the warthog. (Twelve pennies to the shilling).
In 1961, South Africa became a Republic, switched to a decimal currency (the South African Rand), and a new set of stamps was issued. I have that set as well, and will post it soon.
The stamps below depict a warthog, a black wildebeest, a leopard, a zebra, a white rhinoceros, an African elephant, a hippopotamus, a lion, a kudu, a springbok, a gemsbok, a njala, a giraffe and a roan antelope.
It was the first set of stamps depicting South Africa’s wild life heritage, and many, many more stamps depicting wild life would follow.
