A few of my favourite things….Malaysian Cacao Stamps
I’ve collected a lot of interesting, cacao and chocolate themed items on my travels. In this new series, I’ll share some of my favourite things. Since last week we travelled to Penang, here is a little something I picked up in Malaysia.
The central post office in Kuala Lumpur is a maze of rooms. I started in the basement in my search for this stamp. They sent me to Level 1, then to Level 2. By this point, I was starting to lose faith. Maybe this Malaysian stamp featuring cacao that I had seen on the internet was fake news.
The stamp I was looking for is a 5 sen stamp first issued on October 25, 1986 that features a cacao tree with golden yellow cacao pods. It is part of a series of agro based products grown in Malaysia which includes coffee, coconuts, black pepper, rubber, oil pam and paddy. These are all crops that were important for the country’s economic development, especially after it gained independence in 1957.
Cacao was first introduced to Malaysia in the late 19th century and became a significant crop in the 20th century. In the 1960s the country was one of the world’s top producers. But in the 1990s, the country shifted towards palm oil and other crops, and cacao was largely pushed aside.
I showed the man at Level 2 the photo of the stamp. “How many would you like?” he replied. A sheet? “That’s 100 stamps”. Ok? At 5 Malaysian cents each, this came out to only a few dollars. Sold. Now, what to do with all these fantastic stamps!