China 1963 - A Collectible Error?

This is a stamp from the PRC that was issued in 1963. On the reverse, there is a kind of ghost image of the figure on the front - presumably left there because the ink was still wet on the stamp immediately below it in an adjacent sheet.

Would this be a collectible error?

If so, is there a name for this kind of error?

Jimjam,
just a heads up.
that's table tennis, not basketball.

It appears to be a gum-damaged CTO. If you look at the picture of the backside, in the lower left corner I think I see part of the cancellation circle at the left edge. This suggests that the stamp stacked on top of another CTO and partially stuck over time. Upon pulling it apart, it took some of the ink from the stamp beneath it. Examine the back of your stamp to see if there is any presence of the cancel on the backside. If so, then gum-damaged CTO.

k has hit it on the nose once again.

'that's table tennis, not basketball.'

Did I say something about basketball?

'Examine the back of your stamp to see if there is any presence of the cancel on the backside. If so, then gum-damaged CTO.'

Checked - no sign of the presence of the cancel.

It occurse to me they could have been stuck pre-CTO, no?

That's what I suspect myself, smauggie.

jimjamtwo, here, this sort of thing is usually called an 'offset'. In some other jurisdictions, they call it a 'set-off'.

Usually only collectible if it's a complete mirror image, and then the value depends very much on how common offsets are on that stamp - the frequency can vary enormously.

The spot where I thought I might have seen a backside transfer of the cancellation is marked with a red oval below.



Then again, it could just be dirty or an artifact of the scanner or I'm seeing something that is not there. On a true offset, there should be no ink beyond the stamp design frame; so there shouldn't be anything along the edge of the stamp unless the offset itself was shifted (it is not shifted in your picture). Again, I might be seeing something that is not really there.

If it were a true backside offset, the transferred ink would be underneath the gum, as the ink transfer would have occurred prior to the gumming of the stamp. Again, use a good magnifier on the back and you should be able to tell right away.

I don't see the word "basketball" anywhere in your post. However, your uploaded pic has the word "basketball" in the filename. Is that where you saw it, Rod?

That's right khj,
the file is named "basketball marked" :)

I added the "marked"