KEY POINTS:
The nuns of the New Zealand order of Our Lady of Compassion are up to the heavens in postage stamps and may need some divine help to sell them.
The sisters commissioned and then bought $100,000 of special stamps from NZ Post to mark the centenary of the Home of Compassion in Wellington, but the firm made them only on the condition that the nuns buy them all.
"We put an application in, they came back and said they would only make a sticker, but if we were prepared to buy the stamps and then onsell them, they'd do them," said Sister Annette Green.
The congregation, which has its headquarters in Wellington, is now out of pocket and has 200,000 stamps to sell.
"I only really realised when they arrived how many there were," Sister Annette said.
"Hopefully we'll sell them all. There's no time limit on 50c stamps, but I know it's important to push them out now. As time goes on, the interest will lag."
The stamps come in two designs and feature congregation founder Suzanne Aubert, a French missionary who established the home in 1907 to care for orphaned children and the disabled.
She developed a reputation for her nursing skills at the Whanganui River settlement of Jerusalem. But after finding the settlement too remote, she travelled to Wellington and set up the city's first soup kitchen for unemployed men.
The stamps come in $10 sheets of 20 stamps. Order forms can be found at the Home of Compassion web site (see link below).
