Romania 1961 - Double Impression?

Is this stamp a double impression?



For comparison purposes, here the stamp can be seen next to a regular example of the issue:

http://www.freeimagehosting.net/ima...b1de9b2e.jpg

It will be noticed that in several respects the two stamp look quite different. They even have totally dissimilar perfs.

1961 Roumanian sculptures.

Production quality can sometimes be questionable with Roumania.

Photolithography
sculpture "Gh Doja"? I Vlad
designers N Grant and I druga
perf 14 x 13.5 ...others Perf 13.5 x 14


"Gh Doja" after György Dózsa, a Székely from Transylvania who led a peasants' revolt against the Hungarian landed nobility in 1514.

Should mention, these come imperforate as well.

Thanks for the input, rod222. I'm mainly wondering how to account for the appearance of this stamp, which has purple ink inside the white areas, such as the numeral '10.' Since this is a single-colour stamp, the only way I can think of to explain this is that it's a double impression.

Don't let me stop you enquiring,
that's what the family is for,
but I would suggest you may end up chasing your tail
if you question too much the quality of modern Romania.
A great deal of issues were prepared only for the
collecting market, and they were churned out by the thousands.
Some of the stamps issued were not even available in Romania
only to the outside market.
I like Romania, with all its blemishes, It is a huge catalogue
to collect.
Good luck.

News 1978

Interesting stuff there, rod222!

I would imagine many of these pictorials can hardly ever be found in postally used condition.

Yes!!
Everyone should read that article who collects Romanian stamps.
How many times I tried in wain to explain...
CTO here, CTO there, asked for postaly used Romanian Blocks
Thank you Rod

The clipping Rod has scanned is interesting and it reminded me of a statement I once was told by another collector who collected East Germany. He told me that certain values out of any given set of stamps required a license of some sort or special permit to obtain and these were usually the mid to high face value stamp in the set.


This also coincided with the fact that you will notice in the Scott's Catalogue for most, if not all, the eastern European Soviet block countries, that there are some stamps in a set listed in 'italics' rather than in regular font for most other issues and this is because a special permit was needed for certain face values. This policy made some of these stamps quite harder to procure than their lower value counterparts.

What it all boiled down to was politics and the Soviet system wanting more hard cash and the collectors, again, paid the price.

Maybe someone in the forum can enlighten us further on this??

Chimo

Bujutsu

You're right about those East German issue Bujutsu. They called them Speerwerte or Locked/blocked issues
were certain values had a low print run and were intended mainly for foreign subscribers to bring in some hard cash.
The only way an ordinary East German could purchase these was by
acquiring a permit for 2 Marks and then he was allowed to purchase only one copy.
These Speerwerte were on effect between 1955 to 1984 according to
this article in the German Wikipedia which also a pic of one of these permits.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperrwert

Is the Speerwerte policy, so to speak, reflected in the prices of postally used higher denomination GDR stamps? I would imagine that they would be extremely rare.

Reminds me somewhat of my trip to Panama last year. Even at the National Philatelic Office the offerings of stamps was limited. I will not replace a used stamp in my album with a mint copy, unless the cancellation is horrendous.

On reflection of JJ's original query,
I guess, with photlith, the original
etching on the printing plate would have worn
after extensive use with the edges becoming
worn and indistinct, giving a double impression look.
(just a guess mind you)
I used to screenprint T shirts, and the silkscreen would
deteriorate similarly.

For the record,
I faintly recall Australia being guilty of
printing limited supplies as well.
Certain stamps, printed in small numbers were
only available to collectors who subscribed
to certain promotions.
(That's the best my memory can serve :)

Jim they didn't always pic the highest values for Speerwerte, it
could be any value of the set for which they decided to print
low(er) quantities.



There aren't really any stamps from the former DDR which are as you
say extremely rare.

Michel catalogue usually prices commercially used copies higher than MNH.

lithograving, if these Speerwerte issues weren't even available to the general public they cannot have been postally used. Assuming that at least a few were made available for postage purposes, we may be looking at genuinely postally used numbers that are extremely low. They ought to be considered rare! Perhaps they will be considered so in time.