As promised in my earlier post, here’s an advance preview of the new stamps about to be released by the Barbados Philatelic Bureau.

This stamp issue will be to commemorate the 70th Anniversary of the Barbados Fire Service and as forecast, contains a set of five stamps.

What is surprising, however, is that the lowest value is a 5c stamp, a value not issued since 2016 when the ‘Bussa‘ stamp from the Builders of Barbados set was issued. When the Gullies definitive issue was released in 2024 I wrote then about the fact that the 5c was missing and that the older 5c value would continue in use for now. Almost ten years on we finally have a replacement stamp.

Here are the images of the new stamps, thanks to the wonderful team at the Philatelic Bureau.

The inclusion of a $1.50 stamp is also worth noting as this is the first time that value has been issued since the 50th Anniversary of Independence set in 2016.

These new stamps provide an interesting update on the 50th Anniversary set which also used a mixture of black and white and colour photographs to illustrate the Fire Service. It’s also interesting to see the appearance, for the second time, of the long ladder tender, this time with a caption of ‘Specialist Truck’, as it was also featured in the earlier $1.15 value.

What do you think of these new designs? All comments welcome underneath and of course, as soon as I get the actual stamps in my hand I’ll provide some higher resolution images along with hopefully, a first sight of the accompanying first day cover.