PISC Discussion Forums

At Stampex today Nigel Haworth had a stock of 20c, 40c, and 50c overprints on the 44c "Birds" stamp. It looks like they may finally have used up all the 31c stamps and so have started overprinting the 44c value. I don't know when they were officially issued, but he told me that he had received them from the Philatelic Bureau about a month ago. I can't think why they needed another 20c stamp - does anyone have any ideas?

John

The 40c on 44c was issued in June followed by the 20c and 50c which were released either at the end of July or the beginning of August (2014).

The problem with the stocks of 31c sheets was that the ones they had left were sticking together and were unsuitable for overprinting. Even if they had been able to separate them, they'd have jammed in the sheet feeder of the printing machine. I believe that there are still a few usable sheets of the 31c stamps left but those have been set aside, ear-marked for lower demand 1c - 5c values in case any more of those should be required.

Sheets of 20c, 40c and 50c overprints on the 44c original include the usual no gap between "c" and "xxx" at R7 C10.

I spoke to Nigel at the MDPTA fair in October and he'd still got good stocks of all three stamps then.

I'm sure there is a reason why they continue to issue 20c stamps and I suspect that I should know what it is, but I can't remember at the moment. I'll add a note here if it does come back to me.