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Friday April 14, 2006

Special mark of overprint

STAMPS
By V. SENTHINATHAN

ANY inscription printed on the face of a stamp to change or restrict its usage or to commemorate a particular event or even act as propaganda by government agencies is termed as ‘overprints’.

Most of the early overprints were ‘surcharges’ where the face value of the stamps has been altered, usually in increased values, e.g. Germany in 1923 overprinted 2,000,000 deuce marks on its original 200 deuce marks stamps during the inflationary period.

Overprint is a process where additional information are applied over the printed stamps by machine-printing or handstamp process to convey some vital information or messages to the public.

An overprint stamp in conjunction with the Indonesia Philatelic Exhibition in 1993. Note the red print of ‘Indopex ‘93’ on the top right hand corner of the stamp.
India was one of the pioneer countries to have overprint on her definitive stamps with inscription ‘Service’ on 1st August, 1866 and Great Britain’s first overprint with letters ‘I.R. OFFICIAL’ (Inland Revenue Officials) was done in July, 1883.

Overprints on stamps are divided into different categories according to its purpose of overprinting:

a) change the purpose of the original stamp – to ‘fiscal’ for revenue (duty stamp on government documents) or as ‘postage due’ (for insufficient postage paid).

b) change in country name – normally in colonies where shortage of stamps are supplied by the ruling government, e.g. Great Britain stamps were overprinted by colonies.

c) For special events, e.g. highlighting a certain cause or raising relief funds, etc.

d) For political consideration – in case of leadership or government change.

Early overprints were done in special or on emergency situation but the present overprints are purposely reflected, perhaps it acts as an ‘advertisement’ media, probably to raise funds for some associations or exhibitions.

This overprint is due to the inverted words ‘150th Anniversary Abolition of Slavery Act’
Presently the host country to a World Philatelic Exhibition tend to have their stamps overprinted with exhibition ‘venue’ on it for sales at least two years ahead of the exhibition.

This is one of the potential method of fund raising especially to supplement the required capital for an international Exhibition.

There are possibilities to detect ‘errors’ on overprints because of the last minute decision. These error issues will become most interesting item in a thematic collection and its value will be very expensive owing to rarity and its influence in thematic philately.

When overprints are connected with different themes of the original stamp, it reveals an excellent philatelic illustration for the theme connected with the overprints.

Thematic philately demands variety of mixed philatelic materials and inclusion of overprints and possibly ‘overprint error’ will be a splendid item in ones collection.

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