The first stamps

Some sources date the first stamps from 1894, while others say 1895. To cut through the argument, the first stamp designs were printed in France in 1894, but did not reach Ethiopia until the end of January 1895, which is therefore identified as the first date of issue, when they were put on sale in territory.

Large numbers were produced in these first printings, and only a fraction of them were sent to the first post offices in Ethiopia. And here begin the complications when collecting these stamps. It was a private enterprise, allowed by permission of the Emperor. But the European investors needed a profit from their venture. Actual postal usage was always expected to be modest, so a lot of the stock of stamps printed in Paris were retained and sold into the philatelic market for collectors. Consequently the mint stamps are not hard to get hold of, but many of them will not have actually reached Ethiopia at all.

The instructions to the printers was to produce xxxxxx stamps of the four lower denominations, and yyyyyy of the three higher denominations. However the first of many mishaps in the history of posts occurred from a misunderstanding. Far too many of the lion designs were printed. So there were even larger stocks of these. Some of the extra stamps would be retained and later overprinted to make the issues in the early years of the 20th century.

Perhaps it didn’t help that there were only Amharic characters, still very unfamiliar to Europeans. Even the numbers in the denominations used non-western numerals. This was a reason that Ethiopia was not admitted to the Universal Postal Union sooner than they were.