British Commonwealth Stamps  »  New Zealand and Niue

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses (the North Island and the South Island)

Postage stamps have been issued in New Zealand since around the 18th to 20th of July 1855 with the "Chalon head" stamps figuring Queen Victoria. The design was based on a full face portrait of the Queen in her state robes at the time of her coronation in 1837, by Alfred Edward Chalon. The stamps were initially hand cut from sheets, but from 1862 on, these sheets started being fed through automatic perforation machines

On the 1st of January 1901, New Zealand introduced one penny universal postage from New Zealand to any country in the world willing to deliver them. Australia, the United States, France and Germany would not accept such letters, fearful of having to reduce their own postal charges to match. This also halved the cost of mailing letters within New Zealand.

While concern was expressed that Post Office revenues would fall, mail volumes increased sharply and by 1902 any loses had been recovered

New Zealand was the first country in the world to prototype and install a stamp vending machine in the General Post Office in Wellington and Christchurch in the early 1900s