New Purple Heart Reprint

As has been reported elsewhere, a new purple heart reprint dated 2014 with plate number S111111 has been showing up at post offices. I obtained a pane of them today at my local PO. There are some differences. The tagging appears different, the ink colors in the plate number are arranged in a different sequence than the previous 4074 purple heart varieties ... and there is a microprinted USPS near the top to the left of the ribbon.

One has to wonder why the USPS doesn't report this to the stamp collecting community but instead we have to find out about it after the fact.

nothing surprises me about the usps anymore.
Tom

Here's a scan of 4704a:



Seems strange to me that a stamp variety is created by a change to the selvage.

When you go to pick up your girlfriend and her roommate tells you that she has already left for the dance, that tells you one thing...She just doesn't care! Kind of like the USPS view of stamp collectors.

Now that so many stamps are "forever" I think we will see a lot of reprints, some we may not discover for years

carlberky: Your scan is of 4704b rather than 4704a. Scott did some renumbering on this one when they reassigned 4704a to the imperf version of the 2012 purple heart. Note that 4704 can have V111111 or C111111 as plate numbers. 4704a can only have V111111 since press sheets are not issued for reprints. 4704b can only have C111111. I think the new purple heart with plate number S111111 will likely receive a major number ... I would guess 5035.

JL, thanks for the clarification of the varieties.

Let me clarify my question. Can anyone tell the difference between a single 4704 or 4704b ... without selvage showing a plate number?

It's easy to tell the difference between 4704 and 4704b. 4704 has a 2012 date while 4704b has a 2014 date. But it is true that one cannot distinguish between two individual 4704 purple hearts where one came from an AVR pane and the other came from a CCL pane.

JLLebbert - I have both 4704 (from AVR and CCL) and I really cannot tell the difference if we do not look at the plate number.

msfong: I agree that one cannot distinguish between 4704 singles (2012 purple heart) from AVR and CCL panes without a plate number. On the other hand, the two versions of the 2014 purple heart (4704b from CCL and the latest SSP reprint) are easily identified by the presence (or lack thereof) of a microprinted USPS. In a similar vein, 4704 & 4704b have different dates (2012 & 2014 respectively), making them easy to id as well.

I picked up a pane of S111111 today and compared to the earlier C111111 pane and noticed two other differences (aside from the USPS microprinting: (1) the purple of the S pane is a shade paler than that of the C pane; and (2) the 2014 date on the S pane is quite a bit sharper than that of the C pane.

Did anyone else notice these differences, or I just picked up a errant S pane?

Would you all mind letting me know where you are finding these S111111 panes? I can't locate any.

Thanks,

Jackie

Jackie: The SSP purple hearts are being distributed to post offices on an as-needed basis. If you have more than one branch, you might try calling them to see if the stamps are available. I went to two local branches before finding the stamps.
... John ...

Thank you, John.

Jackie

I checked 5 Post Offices but no luck. I called USPS SFS yesterday and hopefully I will receive some soon.