Sonne

Some Sonne stamps, including Agatha Christie, Emperor's Birthday, Mevu's 20th anniversary of independence, and definitives.

The Penny Black Sesquicentennial stamp you show above was issued by the Sonne Empire, an amorphous land in the north Atlantic, created by a young lad living in Brisbane, Australia, in the late 1980s, Timothy Bolotnikoff.

He and I became correspondents, and intrigued with our various lands, exchanging lots of mail between Sonne, Occussi-Ambeno, and Sedang.  He also worked on resurrecting the Monte Bello Islands as a stamp-issuer, and I collaborated with him on that by printing the new Monte Bello stamps and making him a datestamp.

Emperor Tim printed his stamps via photocopy machine, often on coloured paper, and perforated them with his mother's sewing machine.  Eventually, I offered to do a few issues for him via letterpress, and the Mevu 20th birthday stamp shown here is one of my productions.

Tim was a bellicose fellow, responsible for several wars in the normally peaceful Fifth World.  Eventually, he invaded the Occussian colony of West Vinland, located on an island quite near Sonne, territory that he had earlier given to the Sultan.

Finally, he got his law degree and gave up Cinderella philately (much to the relief of the whole Fifth World!) and went off and got a job with the Australian diplomatic service.  He is now an official in the Australian high commission in Bangladesh.

And West Vinland?  Freed from the evil Sonnian occupying army, it declared independence as the Free Vinland Republic, and continues to issue attractive and interesting stamps to this day.