Rusty
McCracken was a little lazy with printing stamps, for a little while he reissued stamps still with the Ash imprint. Ask was the government printer from 1927-1940, he died in 1947. McCracken was the government printer from 1940-1963.
I have both imprints from the 1941 overprints. The sheet you are showing is not the full sheet, just imagine your 80 stamps plus a blank gutter and then another 80 stamps, that is a full sheet, you have one panel of a sheet of 160.
Regardless of the missing stamp, if that panel was rare I can assure you I would be making an offer to buy it from you. The quantity issued of the 2½d surcharge overprint is 32,366,400; it will never reach any status above very common, In the ACSC (Australian Commonwealth Specialists' Catalogue) it is valued at $2.00 per stamp x 79 = $158. The Stanley Gibbons Catalogue values the 2½d surcharge overprint at £1.00 each.
It would be a waste of money buying a panel of 1941 surcharges, they are cheaper than chips and have no real monetary value and never will.
Every stamp dealer has these in stock, so trying to sell that panel to them would be to no avail as there is no interest in dealers buying them because of the issue quantity; if the overprints were misplaced considerably then you would be looking at a market value of $31,600+; a figure that I would have no hesitation in offering.
Quoting Frank
Quote:
John Ash had no involvement in these overprints (not re-engraved as Kevjon189 describes it).
Ash retired in April 1940 and the overprints were printed in December 1941 by W McCracken. They resulted from the imposition of a war surcharge as the new definitives with the tax were not ready for production.
His comment is accurate, and Ash did not melt the stamps and printer, he replaced obsolete presses and destroyed the unissued King Edward VIII plates and any stamps created from it (22 crows was correct about the KEVIII stamps), as ordered by the Postmaster-General's Department, the only issues survived were 6 and that was from the John Ash estate, he was an avid philatelist.
Quoting itma
Quote:
This stamp was issued to post offices in sheets of 160, consisting of two panes, side by side, of 80 stamps.
They were printed in master sheets of 320, one sheet as above, over the other.
He is also correct.
I do a lot of research on Australian stamps and have been doing so for 45 years, and I can assure you the stamps you show is only good for show and tell, nothing more. If you do not believe me, take that panel to any stamp dealer and see if any will be interested, you will be disappointed.
Notice McCracken's early use of the Ash imprint on the 1941 overprints, and then his own.
Image of John Ash (Government printer 1927-1940)Rob
Posted 11/03/2017 2:05 pm
