Latvia SC B57A--Bad Day At The Printers.

Latvia's one true misprint. Part of a semi-postal set issued in December, 1930 to benefit the Latvian Anti-Tuberculosis Society. Current Scott's CV $700. The first 2 values in the set are identical in design. The only difference being the 1s/2s value is purple and the 2s/4s value is orange.

Each sheet contained 100 stamps when it was received by the Riga Main Post Office. While the stamps were on sale at the counter it was noticed that the first stamp of the 5th row was printed with the 1s/2s cliche. The Riga Post Office had received 750 sheets of the 2s/4s stamps, and by the time the error was detected 547 misprinted stamps had been sold already. The remaining 203 misprinted stamps were removed from the sheets and destroyed by the Post Office.

Apparently no indication of wrong doing was ever substantiated and it was ascribed to human error both in the printing and final inspection.

Then of course there is the question of how many survived World War 2. Most of the stamps that I have seen are mint as this trio is. But a number of years ago there was a philatelic cover offered in an auction in Germany with a starting bid of $3000 Euros. Which of course I would have loved to have bid on. There is also a cover shown in a German book on Latvian Philately. So apparently some were actually used and not squirreled right away in stamp collections.

While it shows my dubious moral character, I must admit that I would have been sorely tempted--were I the Riga postal clerk--to pay for a remaining sheet and then secrete it somewhere on my person until I could deliver it to my stamp collection.

Nice.

Regards,
Stampalotapus

Wow John - nice item! interesting background - thanks for sharing.

KGB--Apparently a letter was sent by the Latvian Numismatic Society in Riga to the Post Office on April 30, 1931 requesting that the Post Office sell the misprinted stamps to them for full price. Unfortunately the offending stamps had been destroyed on March 16.

This is a lovely multiple. It's the one major Latvia error I'm missing and, given the price and rarity, I'm not surprised I don't have it.

The practice of postal clerks squirrelling away errors is (was) very widespread, and I'm surprised it wasn't done at the time. Maybe it wasn't noticed?

Thanks so much for sharing.

John,

Nice post, and a fascinating error block!

Noting your advanced collecting interest in classic Latvian stamps, I have a question for you, namely do you know of any US-based societies or study-groups for Latvian stamps. My own collecting interests include Latvian map and banknote stamps (especially blocks and multiples), but I have so far failed to find others with a similar interest.

Best Regards,

InforaPenny

Don't know of anything in the US right now. Here is a link from Canada for map stamps in case you haven't seen it http://www.apsit.com/mapstamp.htm

I always wondered how the error was found. Some customer coming back in to complain about something being wrong with his stamp? Or an eagle-eyed clerk that caught it? I doubt it was a collector....they would have been back in buying up the rest of the sheets!

This is a page from Lettland, Handbuch Philatelie und Postgeschichte, Die Briefmarken by Harry v. Hoffman p. 134. I love that cover!

John,

Thanks for your prompt reply and mention of the apsit.com site on the map stamps, which is one of my favorites. It sounds like, as I suspected, that there is no active Latvian collectors group in this part of the world, with none listed on the APS website either.

Best Regards,

InforaPenny

John, thanks for the scan of the "used" varieties. It seems that the collectors got in very quickly once it was found out that this error had occurred.

I, like you, wonder whether these errors were ever done deliberately. I'm drifting off-topic but in 1931 a retired employee of the South African government printing works, Philip Callard, was sentenced for four months with hard labour for stealing and using proofs on postal envelopes to make money. He was also strongly suspected of faking some South West Africa overprints for the collector's market. I really ought to post a small article about this. Anyway, the point is that it has been recorded elsewhere.

The block of 4 looks to be CTO. However, the cover shows the correct amount for what it was mailed as--local mail + registered mail. Whether it was sent to someone else or just mailed back or handed back to the sender will never be known. It also was mailed at the Railway Station Post Office the day after issue and not the main post office.

InforaPenny: you might contact John Variakojis at the Lithuania Society to see if he knows of anyone in US doing Latvia. His e-mail is on the APS web site under specialty societies.

Here is the cover I mentioned in the original post. Mailed on the day of issue, the postage is correct for a local registered letter which meant counting the error pair as 1 santims for the error and 2 santimi for the correct stamp. The far left stamp is Sc 56 and not an error stamp.

See: http://www.latvianstamps.com/index.htm

http://www.latvianstamps.com/Refere...ollector.htm