Barbados Maximum Cards

As regular readers of this blog will know, I’m attracted to most things philatelic when it comes to Barbados, so when I saw these I knew I had to have them.

Collecting maximum cards, also known as Maximaphily, is a long established branch of philately, but there are very few of these cards that relate to Barbados. The first, and probably most obvious question is ‘what is a maximum card’ and how is it defined? For this I’m grateful to the Norphil blog, who has summarised the FIP Regulations on this (yes, there are rules!) which state that

“A Maximum card is made up of three elements:
1. The postage stamp. 2. The picture postcard. 3. The postmark.
The relationship between these three elements should be as close as possible – the term used in the English translation of FIP regulations is ‘concordance’. Ideally the relationship should be pictorial, but suitable non-pictorial postmarks may also be used.”

In short, it’s a slightly overlarge postcard with one side taken up by a picture, on which a stamp and cancellation are then added, and all three relate to each other.

Despite being a recognised branch of philately, it’s not one that has taken off on Barbados and to date, I only know of three sets that have received this treatment, all issued to highlight the work done by the previously named World Wildlife Fund, now known as the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), to focus attention on endangered species.

There are three Barbados WWF Maximum Card sets to look out for on this theme and they are:

• 1991 – Endangered Species – Yellow Warbler – SG 948-951
• 1999 – Endangered Species – Piping Plover – SG 1134-1137
• 2006 – Endangered Species – Queen Triggerfish – SG 1290-1293

Whilst I have the accompanying WWF FDC’s, I’ve only actually got the set shown in this blog as, to date, I’ve not really focused on the others, but now I realise that I should probably try and acquire them.

Anyway, this is the set of four that I do have:

As you can see, the card is a photograph of the Piping Plover and in each case, whilst not being the same as the stamp, it is very similar. The stamps are tied to the card with a First Day of Issue cancellation which also contains a picture of the bird.

All in all, they are rather nice items to own and view and they now enhance my own FDC collection. Now all I need to do is find the others…

Post Script

Shortly after posting this blog, it occurred to me that I should perhaps double check on Google for Barbados maximum cards. Imagine my surprise when the first result was for this website, and a Sir Garfield Sobers maximum card which I have for sale in the shop!

So, to correct the above, other than the one maximum card issued in 1966, Barbados have only issued three sets of maximum cards…