Help Needed Gilbert And Ellice Islands 1976

Need help trying to find cat value and meaning I got these in with so me old stamps I brought from a friend the envelope reads 1976 opts (Gilbert's) 2@1c 2@2c (comp) each £24 what is the error and what does opts stand for?

Opts usually stands for overprints.
The two you show are part of a definitive set of 14(?) issued in 1976. I found the set on http://freestampcatalogue.com but can not tell you what the error is.

Peter

Hi Jono,

Both stamps are listed in my old catalogues with two different watermarks but none has a high value.

Perhaps someone with an up-to-date catalogue can comment?

On the one cent there are two watermarks but there is no premium for either.

On the two cent the watermark can be found upright but again there is no premium.

Okay thankyou for the help

Lets back up for a minute and explain a few things . The original stamps came out with one set of watermarks {Scott wmk 373} ,this is on all the stamps of that set , this watermark is easy to see in fluid on the backs of the stamps . This would be the 1971 set [original series}.
Then around 1977 ,the printer came out with a new watermark, this watermark paper had [Scott wmk 314 ] the St. Edward's Crown and C A Multiple . This watermark is very difficult to see even in watermark fluid . The best place to see this watermark is in the sleveage . It can be seen under a special light if held at a certain angle .
My method to identify this watermark is if you see no watermark on the stamp then it is the harder and difficult C A multiple watermark . If you have a large assortment of stamps from various sources then you can identify by a color /shade difference also .

Now lets go to your comment about the 24 POUNDS , When that second watermark came out around 1977 . The Crown Agent only sold them to select stamp dealers and not thru the regular post office system . This secret "FIND" of different watermark paper was offered to the public at 24 POUNDS ,that is the price dealers were running ads in the philatelic press. Another HOT market for rare stamps . As any phoney market the prices started to fall .

See the crazy stuff you learn on a stamp chat board .

Floortrader, you have it reversed. The original Gilbert and Ellice stamps were issued in 1971 with watermark 314, without the overprint of course.

In late 1974 the Ellice Islands decided to secede as Tuvalu, which was to happen in late 1975. Definitive stamps were sent back from the colony for overprinting with the names Gilbert Islands and Tuvalu. However, it turned out there were not enough stamps, so the crown agents reprinted new stamps with watermark 373, their newest watermark recently adopted for all British Colonies. These were then included with the recalled stamps and all were overprinted. So stamps with watermark 373 do not exist without the overprint. But most overprinted stamps exist with more than one watermark type.

The Crown Agents were only hired to produce the overprinted stamps. The stamp sales of both colonies was controlled by another company, Philatelists, Ltd. They were the ones involved with the "funny stuff" related to watermarks, specimen stamps, etc.

However, I don't remember any watermark of the 1c or 2c Gilbert Islands ever having any value - but for Tuvalu, yes. The 2c watermark 314 upright still has a very high Scott value.

BEE SEE ----Your right, the wmk 314 came out first and the wmk 373 came out in 1976-77 . Wrote it backwards this morning . The best place to see this is on the stamps of this time period with these two watermarks are South Georgia stamps .

Given the time period, it would not surprise me if these items were marketed with "artificial rarity" and an inflated price. This was the era of gutter pairs, traffic light gutter pairs, sheetlets with labels, stamp investment newsletters, new issues futures portfolios, and speculators buying by standing order 10 or 25 each of new issues they believed would increase in value. Tuvalu had a Christmas set (I think 1976- Scott 38-42) that came out in sheetlets of 10 with 2 labels that once sold for $500 a set (c. 1979).

By 1982, all the activity related to manufactured scarcity and "investment" disappeared (as did many dealers) when the market for philatelic commodities crashed and burned.

The Tuvalu 1976 Christmas stamps were the last commemoratives printed on Crown Agent paper. There were 40,000 sets issued, meaning 4,000 sheets of ten. Of course many were broken into singles. Tuvalu, a brand new stamp issuing country at the time was very popular, part of the reason for the price rise (also the price rise for the overprinted definitives). Then came the Leaders of the World fiasco in the early 1980's, in addition to the market collapse mentioned by Shermae.

Here are illustrations of the watermarks Scott 314 and 373, in their normal positions on the 1976 Gilbert and Ellice overprints for the Gilbert Islands and Tuvalu:

Watermark 314 on Vertical stamps (like 1c)


Watermark 314 on Horizontal stamps (like 2c)


Watermark 373 on Vertical stamps (like 1c)


Watermark 373 Horizontal stamps (like 2c)


The normal position for 373 on the vertical stamps WAS inverted.

As Floortrader pointed out, watermark 373 can be very difficult to see.