Jeu Philatélique – Les Colonies Françaises

For a philatelist and card collector such as myself, this is the ultimate collector’s piece – a card game with a real postage stamp affixed to each card! The game is of the Happy Families type, with 8 sets of 6 cards, each set representing one of the French colonies from the 1940s – Algeria, Cameroon, Dahomey, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mauritania and Réunion. Just five different unicoloured backgrounds have been used to set the scene – quite a simple printing job. To each of these a mint postage stamp has been affixed, above or beneath which is a list of all the stamps in each family. The last of the low-value stamps was issued in 1941 but, with inflation during the Second World War, these were almost worthless only a few years later. Thus, it would have cost next to nothing to buy the stamps for use in this game. Still, someone had to stick them onto the cards! Camel, crocodile and elephant motifs adorn the reverse in orange, grey-blue and black. The cards themselves are quite flimsy • See the box

Above: “Jeu Philatélique – Les Colonies Françaises” printed by Draeger Frères for Miro Company, Paris, France, c1945. 48 cards + rules in French, in tuck box. Size: 70 x 105 mm.

See the rules►

Miro Company was founded in Paris in 1936. The company had links with Parker Brothers and Waddingtons, publishing and selling French editions of Monopoly and Lexicon.