Micronational Stamps

To close out our week of "micronational collectibles", we'll consider the postage stamp. While it isn't something that Slabovia has actively pursued, many micronations have their own stamps made.

Stamp from the Aerican Empire, given out at MicroCon 2025

A set of stamps commemorating the first four MicroCon events, created by West Who

An assortment of stamps from Obscurium

What's more, many micronations actually use their stamps in mail - as long as your envelope has the appropriate postage for the "macronation" it'll be passing through, it generally moves just fine through the postal services. The photo below includes envelopes I've received from (top to bottom) Angyalistan, West Who, Ruritania, Duckionary, and Obscurium

An assortment of micronational stamps that have moved through the macronational postal systems

This concludes this week's exploration of various micronational souvenirs I've collected over the years. Hopefully it's given you some idea of the creativity involved in creating and running a micronation!

Micronational Currency

Continuing with our theme of "micronational collectibles", another area that many micronations choose to explore is making their own currency. The picture below has representative examples from three different micronations, including Aigues-Mortes (top left), the Aerican Empire (bottom left and lower right), and Molossia (the poker chip, er, coin in the top right).

Examples of micronational currency

The Flamant from Aigues-Mortes is particularly interesting because it's a "legal" currency - due to a quirk of French banking laws, they were able to create a currency that's legal tender within the town of Aigues-Mortes, and is accepted by at least some merchants there.

The Molossian coin is a "5 valora" piece, the valora being somehow pegged to the price of Pilsbury cookie dough (yes, the stuff that comes in a tube).

You can't see the detail very well, but the blue coin from the Aerican Empire on the right is a 1.99 Bacon piece, Bacon being the name of the Emperor's cat. They print the coins in different sizes using a 3D printer, and the value of each coin is pegged to the amount of plastic filament used in making that particular coin.

Another example of bank notes comes from Karnia-Ruthenia - I picked these up at MicroCon 2025. They are relatively small (measuring 5x10 cm or 2x4 inches) but they feature very nice engraving!

Bank notes from Karnia-Ruthenia

Micronational Challenge Coins

This week, I'm focusing on several different micronational "trappings" (including challenge coins, currency, and stamps) that I've managed to build small collections of over the years - they might give you some idea about the depth and breadth of creativity that micronations can pursue.

Challenge coins aren't too common in the micronational world yet, but that's slowly starting to change. One of the elements in the "swag bag" at MicroCon 2025 was a challenge coin, in fact. Here's the ones I have collected in the last few years. This includes the aforementioned MicroCon 2025 coin from the Aerican Empire, one presented to me by Jordan Farmer, the former prime minister of Westarctica, and one from the Chief of Staff of Karnia-Ruthenia, as well as a commemorative coin I had made and distributed to signatories of the CHICAGO Agreement (see note below) and my personal challenge coin.

Top Row: MicroCon 2025, Prime Minister of Westarctica, Karnia-Ruthenia Chief of Staff
Bottom Row: CHICAGO Agreement commemorative coin, my personal challenge coin

Same coins as above, just flipped over!

NOTE: The CHICAGO Accord (or Agreement) is short for the Cyber Hostility Intervention Comprehensive Agreement Covering Offense. It's a treaty I drew up in conjunction with my talk at MicroCon 2023 (which was held near Chicago!) about cyber warfare and micronations. Effectively, signatories of the CHICAGO Accord promise not to engage in offensive cyber warfare against other micronations. A list of signatories of the CHICAGO Accord can be found here.

Edited to add: if you're wondering what the deal is with challenge coins, Howard Tayler wrote a pretty good guide on his Schlock Mercenary web comic some years ago.

What is a fons honorum and why is it important?

 Did you ever wonder how royal titles like "baron" or "lord" get granted, or how a chivalric order gets established? In this case, both questions have the same answer - the fons honorum, or (literally) "fount of honour".

The term fons honorum comes from Latin, and refers to an individual whose position grants them the right to confer titles on others and/or to establish chivalric orders. Typically, this is the sovereign ruler of a nation, such as a king or queen. Elected officials such as presidents and prime ministers are typically NOT considered to be a fons honorum.

A related but different concept is the military commission - in many military organizations, an officer carries a "commission" which is a formal document communicating the individual's authority to effectively act on behalf of the head of state in the command of others. In this case the head of state could be a president or prime minister, rather than just a sovereign. As an aside, this is also why enlisted military personnel such as sergeants and corporals are sometimes called NCM (non-commissioned members) or NCO (non-commissioned officers). Not to muddy the waters further, but in the US military a "warrant officer" has their position and authority granted by a warrant that's usually signed by the secretary of the respective service, rather than a commission signed by the president.

Going back to the topic at hand, i.e. the fons honorum, it is possible to delegate the authority - in Slabovia's case, I granted the Baron of Mars (AKA my chancellor) and his household the authority to create and grant a household honour, and I understand that they are now designing it. I also granted my queen-consort, Queen Lynne, the authority to name individuals to her "Queen-Consort's Fellowship", an honour she has granted numerous times over the last eight years.

The Queen-Consort's Fellowship medal

To sum up, a ruling sovereign is the fons honorum, or fount of honour, for the nation they rule. As such, yes, I have the power to elevate someone to the nobility - I could, for example, proclaim someone to be the Baron of Barrie or the Count of Cabbagetown, and such a title would be valid within the confines and the context of Slabovia. Whether that could get you any perks, such as a discount at your local drycleaners, is left as an exercise for the reader.

Oh, and before anyone asks.. No, I will not elevate you to the peerage (or knight you) just because you asked. Such honours are bestowed for a reason, and giving them out like candy would cheapen them.

Administrative Announcements

 For the last couple of weeks, I've been experimenting with blogging more frequently, taking advantage of the ability to schedule posts for future publication. Going forward, I'm going to try to post three times a week on Blogger, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Ideally I'll have the posts queued up beforehand so they will auto-post at 7am on the days in question. And, if I've done it right (using "If This Then That" or IFTTT), then such postings should trigger a corresponding post over on my Facebook profile. If I can figure out how to do it, I'll also link my Bluesky account to update when the blog does.

And hopefully I can keep coming up with enough content for that schedule... Regardless, I will NEVER use generative artificial intelligence systems to write my posts for me. I have used it for generating pictures, including the centre-piece of the KOALA patch as previously discussed, because I'm a crappy artist, but the writing here is all mine.

Oh, I also have a Linktree now - you can find it here. (https://linktr.ee/KingGeorge2.0) As I evolve my social media presence I'll make sure to keep the Linktree updated.

I'm of two minds about Twitter (or X or whatever): on the one hand, it's still got over 600 million users, and at least a third of those are active, but on the other hand I left it for some good reasons, and it seems to have gotten worse since I left, not better (based on news reporting about the antics of Grok, the Twitter AI, anyway). I'll have to consider this some more.

New unit, new uniform (same king)

 I wore a new uniform for the diplomatic reception on the Friday night at MicroCon, as can be seen in the picture below. It represents the public debut of our new military unit, the King's Own Airborne Llama Artillery, or KOALA for short.

Dress uniform for KOALA, the King's Own Airborne Llama Artillery.
(My chancellor, Rankin, is visible on the right side of the photo.
And someone fuzzy is in the background?)

KOALA is actually based on two different historical facts - or, at least, one fact and a rumour. First, the rumour:  according to my father, our family might have been descended from a famous US military officer, who revolutionized the use of artillery in the Mexican-American war by realizing you didn't actually need to unhitch the horses to fire. (As I always say, as a bonus, it made the horses run a lot faster, too!) Second, a few years ago I learned about "zamburak", which were camel-mounted artillery pieces. 

The name of the unit is also based on historical precedents, between "horse artillery" units such as the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery and units like the "Queen's Own Rifles". So KOALA is sort of a mashup of the two, with "airborne" thrown in for good measure.

So, since llamas are the national animals of Slabovia, I thought, could we do the same thing but with llamas? And then, to make them our "rapid response" unit, we could make them airborne!

The only thing keeping the unit from "going live" is a lack of airborne-qualified llamas. 

Oh, and yes, that's the head of a stuffed llama poking out of the holster - when anyone asked if it was loaded, I replied, "Yes, he's been drinking all day, he's QUITE loaded at this point." The llama was given to me by Zar Antonov of Obscuria in a parcel he sent me earlier this year. I put it in the holster because I wanted to make it quite clear that there was nothing more, um, pistol-like in said holster, just in case anyone got "twitchy". 

Another shot of the KOALA uniform, with Molossian President Kevin Baugh for scale.

Oh, and KOALA has a "Unit Crest" as well! I came up with idea for the overall design, and Chancellor Rankin was kind enough to help me realize my vision, because curved text can be a royal pain if you don't have the right image editing software! I did use Generative AI to come up with the "Koala bear with a gun" in the center of the piece, because I am spectacularly bad at drawing.

The crest for KOALA.

Panel Discussion from MicroCon 2025

 In addition to my own talk at MicroCon 2025, I also took part in a panel discussion called "The Show Must Go Wrong", together with the hosts of MicroCon 2015 (His Excellency Kevin Baugh and his wife Adrienne), MicroCon 2017 (HRH Princess Julianna representing Ruritania), and MicroCon 2022 (Grand Duke Travis McHenry of Westarctica).

The panel discussion is a bit long (the video's about 42 minutes long) but it was good fun.

You can watch it here.

My talk from MicroCon 2025

 If you didn't make it to MicroCon 2025, and you're not in the MicroCon 2025 group on Facebook, you should still be able to watch my talk here - it's about 15 minutes long.

Oh, and here is my traditional photo of the MicroCon audience, taken from the speaker's podium...

A sneak peek...

 Just a heads-up for anyone in the Great Lakes region who's interested in micronations - we're currently planning a local event for next spring (late May or early June) in the area around Brantford, Ontario...

More details to come once the time and place are "set in stone"!

Royal Warrants

 Recently, I had the opportunity to buy some customized product from Million-prints.com, and as a result of that, I started thinking about royal warrants again.

For the uninitiated, a royal warrant is a document that proclaims a merchant to be the preferred supplier of a particular product (or set of products) to the royal household. There's a great write-up on them over at Wikipedia.

Anyway, I decided to issue my first royal warrant, because I was so happy with how the bricks turned out.

The presentation of the royal warrant to Marc of Million-prints.com

This picture was provided by Marc, showing the royal warrant on the wall of his shop.

I'm so happy with how the royal warrant turned out (and Marc's response to it) that I'm thinking I may give others to local businesses I frequent, like maybe the veterinarian that takes care of our royal mouser. (I know that Buckingham Palace doesn't give out royal warrants for services, but they do their thing and I'll do mine.)

A short video clip from MicroCon 2025

 RTAM (Radio télévision Aigues-Mortes), a micronational news agency, was at MicroCon 2025, and managed to get me on video briefly...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-kfSB81pwg

It's better to give than to receive...

In my last post, I showed off the "bling" I received at MicroCon 2025 in Montreal. We also gave out several awards at MicroCon - and that's perhaps the most fun part of the event, at least for me!

Above, I am presenting Phillip of Pibocip with a Slabovian Friendship medal. The chancellor separately gave the same medal to Jenny Yan, the consort of our host, but I don't have a picture of that occasion.

Above, the chancellor and I are presenting Commodore Jonathan Miller of Molossia with the Coke Zombie award, which he has coveted for years.

Above, the chancellor assists me in presenting our MicroCon host, Emperor Eric Lis of the Aerican Empire, with the Order of Slabovia, our highest honour.

I don't have a picture of it, unfortunately, but I also gave the "King's Mark of Friendship" to Eric Szuluch (sp?) of Nolandia, who was there with a documentary crew covering his journey into micronationalism.

Other awards from MicroCon

 I've already discussed my induction into the Micronational Hall of Excellence, but I was gifted with several other awards and honours at MicroCon 2025 in Montreal.

From left to right, the 55th Anniversary medal from West Who, a medal from Queen Christina of Cyclodia celebrating the fifth year of her reign, a friendship medal from the Duchy of Faulkender (part of Westarctica), a friendship and diplomacy medal from Sylvestria, and the MicroCon 2025 commemorative medal.

We separately received several physical specimens as contributions to the MEDALS archive, including these two:

Above is the Officer (4th class) of the Order of Ladon, which is awarded by Ladonia.

And this is the Order of the New Rubix Republic (gold).

I'd like to thank...

 This past weekend was MicroCon 2025, held in Montreal, QC. There's a lot that happened this past weekend, but this post is about one thing in particular. During that event, on the Saturday night, I was very pleased to be inducted into the Micronational Hall of Excellence (MHoE)!

Award certificate and medal for the Micronational Hall of Excellence (MHoE)

His Excellency, President Kevin Baugh of Molossia presents me with the MHoE medal

There are so many people that I want/need to thank for this award. Obviously, my wife and Queen-consort, Lynne, who puts up with all of this madness, and my chancellor Rankin, who really does help and co-run the kingdom in so many useful and helpful ways - and the rest of the Slabovians, for putting up with me as their ruler while I figured out what I should be doing (and not doing)! Also Emperor Eric Lis of the Aerican Empire and his people for such a wonderful event, and Jordan Farmer for proposing and organizing the MHoE, and inviting me to join the board when it was started, and President Kevin Baugh of Molossia for organizing the first MicroCon back in 2015, and literally everyone I've met at every single MicroCon event since the first one, and all of the micronationals I've met both online and in the real world. This is such an amazing community, and I'm happy to be a part of it in so many ways!

But I'm not ready to rest on my laurels yet, and I've come away from MicroCon (as always) with some new ideas - watch this space for an announcement about something new, coming soon!

MicroCon host nation preparations

 This picture was posted over on Facebook by the host nation(*) with the caption, "How many big boxes does it take to carry a hundred or so goodie bags? Four and counting. I'm sure glad I don't have to bring most of them home again!"

(*) For reasons I won't get into here, both Saint-Castin and Sancratosia backed out of MicroCon at the last minute, leaving the Aerican Empire to finalize preparations and host the conference on their own. Fortunately, the MicroCon community is stepping up and volunteering to assist in any way necessary.

MicroCon 2025 - two weeks to go!

 We are just under two weeks from MicroCon 2025, which will be held at the Ruby Foo's hotel in Montreal, QC. This year's event is being hosted by three micronations working together, including the Aerican Empire, the Newgraviate of Saint-Castin, and the Principality of Sancratosia. I know the rulers of all three micronations, and I'm quite confident that this will be an amazing event. (UPDATED to reflect new realities that came out shortly after this was originally posted...)

At this point, there's about 44 micronations and 115 people registered to attend, shattering all previous records for both.

Slabovia is, of course, attending, and I'll be on a panel discussion with other former MicroCon hosts, and might also be giving a separate talk, time permitting.

We've also been busy preparing various things to give away at the conference, because that's always fun. One of the things I'm most amazed with and proud of is pictured below - these are custom-printed Lego(tm) pieces we had done by Marc at Million Prints. He does great work!

Micronational Hall of Excellence

 A few years back, I was privileged to be asked to join the Board for a new body being formed, the Micronational Hall of Excellence. Since that time, Slabovia has kept her seat on the board and two votes in the voting body, and we intend to remain a part of this august body for as long as they'll have us.

Previous inductees have included names that ring through the history of micronationalism, including Emperor Norton, Prince Leonard of Hutt River, Prince Roy of Sealand, and Statssekreterare Lars Vilks of Ladonia, as well as a number of micronational leaders who I've been privileged to consider as friends and colleagues, including President Kevin Baugh of Molossia, Queen Anastasia of Ruritania, Queen Carolyn of Ladonia, Prince Jean-Pierre IV of Aigues-Mortes, and Grand Duke Travis of Westarctica.

Voting is currently under way for the 2025 induction, and while I can't comment as to the vote results, I can say that there are a number of deserving nominees, both historical and current.

Re: That last interview

 Available now on iHeart Radio, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify!

Another interview!

 Today, I spent over an hour talking to His Royal Highness, Prince Stephen of Dracul for his podcast, Micro Improvement. I'll post the link once this episode is live (February 7th?) but you can find the podcast on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. Now in its third season, so far this year the podcast has talked to Dr. Eric Lis (Emperor of the Aerican Empire), Queen Carolyn of Ladonia, and Sultan Randy Williams of Slowjamastan.