Bolivia Missing Overprint

I have this mint stamp from Bolivia (Scott 438) that is missing the overprint that Scott says its suppose to have. There is a stamp from the same series at the top with its correct overprint (Scott 436). According to Scott, the stamp missing its overprint should be overprinted with 400bs. Is this an error? Has anyone ever seen this before?


Correct, with overprint


Incorrect, missing overprint


*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

Donning the horns of the Devil's advocate...
can I see some red in the second stamp there?
perhaps the red has faded?

That read hint is from the scanner. Trust me. I can tell you with 100% certainty that there is no red on it.

It is not really an error. The set is known to exist without the overprint, although it was not regularly issued as such. I would take a wild guess and think it was a subsequent sale of remaining non-surcharged stock, because I've not seen a genuine postally used copy with no surcharge (doesn't mean they don't exist, I just haven't seen one).

I think the non-surcharged set actually retails for roughly 50% of the normal stamps -- that is my rough estimate as the Scott catalog prices for Bolivia have been extremely volatile the past 2 years or so (probably more from Scott finally getting around to updating Bolivia, rather than real price changes).

This set of 19 was issued in 1926 but never put on sale. Many years later all values except the three centavos were overprinted with new values. They are listed in the Celiflo catalog as 183-201. There were 750,000 of the 15 centavlos printed, one of the more common values.

It's possible to construct a full Sun Gate using the comp0lete set though with five each of the 1/2 centavo, 1 centavo,2 centavo, 3 centavo, 5 centavo, and 10 centavos. The Cefilco catalog values the that set at $350. Most of that value is in the 3 centavos value, mostly destroyed and valued at $35 each by Cefilco.

Any idea of the going rate for the Cefilco Catalogue please?
New and used ?

The overcharged stamps are from 1960, the originals w/o overcharge are from 1925.