Mistakes on Stamps

Although a damaged stamp loses much of its value unless it is extremely rare, a stamp with a mistake in its design or printing usually gains, depending on how many were printed with the mistake. Some philatelists specialise in collecting stamps with mistakes, though apart from some common ones, they are expensive to acquire.

The 10pf green German stamp commemorating the death of the composer, Schumann, has music by Schubert in the background and the one and a half penny red of Fiji has a sailing canoe that should have a helmsman, but he is obviously absent. A 50cent red of North Borneo has the spelling of ‘Jessleton’ that should be spelt ‘Jesselton’. Sarawak issued an orange 10cent stamp with an image of a scaly anteater walking on two legs, whereas in reality this animal can only walk on four legs. The 1d blue Guernsey, Bailiwick stamp has the line of latitude marked at 40.30degrees North which runs just north of Madrid, Spain. The accurate latitude should be 49.30 degrees North.

Stamps are carefully checked during printing and any that are found to have errors are meant to be destroyed. Some printer’s errors, however, manage to make it to the public arena. Older printing machines could only print one colour at a time, which meant that the paper had to be taken out and fed through the machine several times during the course of printing. In a 4f green and red French stamp, the paper was put in the wrong way round for the centre picture to be printed and so it is ‘inverted’ or upside down. In 1d red British South Africa stamps, some were overprinted upside down. The bars should have blotted out the original value at the top of the stamps and the words ‘Half Penny’ in the overprint are obviously inverted. Even on modern, multicoloured stamps, it is possible for colours to be missed out completely if the ink supply fails. The New Zealand Centenary of Railways 1863 – 1963 is an example. The train should be red and the circle containing the face value is also meant to be red but, as the ink supply failed, both these areas remain white. New Zealand provides another example with the 3d blue + 1d for Red Cross Charity Stamp is meant to have a red flag. Some stamps escaped the watchful eye of the printer and emerged with the red missing and so the white flag is evident.