Under a contract authorized by the Afghani government, a very large number of attractive stamp sets, almost all being of a popular topical nature, appeared in the philatelic market during the 21 April 1961-15 March 1963 period. Investigations revealed that only a very small amount of these stamps were available at the Kabul General Post Office, most times for as little as a few hours, with the available stamps being the very low values of the sets that they represented, and for which there were no postal rates. It was obvious that the issues were produced for philatelic purposes only, and when the contract expired in 1963, it was not renewed. In most of the collecting areas, these issues are regarded as being labels, and not postage stamps.
