Russian Grenoble Error Stamp #3370. Has Anyone Heard Of This One?

In this error stamp from 1967 the green ink is lacking so the Olympic Rings, flower, printing and ski figure are affected. It seems that the stamps on the far right of a few of the printed sheets were impacted. I have a strip of 5 mint but cancelled stamps with the left 4 stamps normal and the error occurring on the fifth stamp on the far right of the strip. I acquired this stamp from the Bileski estate and he coined the term "Grenoble Error" in a note with the stamps. However there is nothing in Scott about it and I've found nothing yet on line about this error. Has anyone heard of it before? Is there any estimate of value? I would appreciate any information or comments. Thank you.

They look like CTO stamps. Full gum on back? Never heard that title before. Not sure from picture, but it appears the stamp on the right may have toned paper? That usually means exposure to sunlight/ultra violet or possibly chemical exposure. It may explain the missing green?

I had Canadian stamps with blue color that I thought may have been errors but they were turned green from similar conditions mentioned.

Thank you for your response. Yes these are CTO stamps with full gum. The stamps are not bleached or uv exposed. I've attached here a scan vs the earlier iPhone picture which will provide a clearer view. The earlier pic was of the strip enclosed in a clear plastic envelope which caused glaring. This scan is of the stamp out of its plastic envelope. Sorry for the poor quality of the first posted picture. The error stamp is missing the green ink and all other features of the stamp and other inks are the same as the other stamps beside it. Hope this helps to better describe the stamps.

There appears to be some green ink as shown above. It seems odd that the green ink in the leg stops in a very straight vertical line.
Don

I agree with Don's partial inking illustration. Looks like a printing glitch - although quite eye-catching. Thus a "green partially missing" freak, not typically to the level of catalog listable as a full color missing error.

Interesting.
For a member with only 5 posts, may I congratulate you on a great thread title !
Lovely to see attention to detail in thread titles, rather than "what's this?" etc.
Well done Wigeon.

As a strange twist, SPAIN 1968 Grenoble, appears to have an error "missing Red colour" Value €150
(If I am reading the *.pdf correctly)

https://www.filateliallach.com/suba...logo0135.pdf

Thanks for reposting a clearer image of the stamp in question. It clearly shows that most of the green is missing, and rod222 came up with a missing color cousin. Nice

Thank you Don, John and Rod. Your comments and feedback are much apprecited. I am only recently getting back into stamp collecting after a long hiatus after retiring from a long career as a biologist.

There was a typed or carbon copy letter written by Mr Bileski with the strip of stamps. I presume it is over 50 years old but not dated. There are a few typos in the letter corrected in pen by hand as he normally did with his many offerings. I' ll quote from the longer than normal letter which I think corroborates that this error is due to a glitch in printing and that there may only be one sheet of 50 stamps (10 strips of 5 stamps) with this green ink issue.

"Russian Errors

The rarest errors in the world must be Russian, especially of the last 40 years. None are ever made deliberately and all printed stamps go through exhaustive inspections, easily far beyond those in the U.S.A. and Great Britain, as witness the various postal errors that escape normal inspection. They surpass, even by far the very rigorous Canadian inspection. Here in Canada we have had several major errors in the past 20 years, but who has ever heard of anything similar in Russian stamps, despite their great output of stamps every year.

The explanation as to why there is such careful checking is simple: "Errors encourage speculation."

I have a New York source that supplies me with yearly collections of Russian stamps. it's the prime source that imports and supplies the dealers on this continent. Their representative told me he personally has been checking all incoming stocks during the past 20 years and it has involved looking at millions of sheets. Until recently all he has ever found was a couple of sheets with a double perf and another one that had the paper joined which was duly printed over the join.

And finally he hit the jackpot!

One solitary sheet of 50 stamps, the 12k value, #3370, publicizing the 10th Winter Olympic Games at Grenoble, France, was found with the green printing (Russian words, Grenoble and Olympic insignia) missing on the last vertical row of stamps!

This error would only have happened because the sheet was advanced too far by one row and failed to get the green colour on the final row and it escaped checking because at first sight the sheet looked quite normal.

Only 10 of this error exist which must rank it as the very rarest of all Russian varieties. I have broken up the sheet into horizontal strips of 5, each showing the 4 normal stamps ending in the error.

As to the price of $200.00 per strip, this is reasonable. Were it from Great Britain, U.S.A. or Canada, one can be certain the starting price would be at least $2,000.00 for an item of such rarity.

Hence forward this will be known as the Grenoble Error.

K. Bileski"

I agree that there is some green ink in places on the left side of the stamp that Mr Bileski doesn't specifically mention so the printing error didn't affect the whole stamp. So far I've found no other evidence of this error being mentioned online or from various discussion boards which speaks to its rarity, possibly just impacting one sheet as Mr Bileski states. One wonders what became of the other 9 strips of 5 stamps that he would have sold off and why would this one strip not have been guarded more carefully in his offices being lumped in with a box of odd material that I happened to purchase long after his family had auctioned off the major part of his collection in Toronto following his death in 2005. Sadly Mr Bileski's elderly daughter Jeanette Warga who allowed me to salvage a number of boxes of material from his old by now somewhat chaotic offices passed away last fall and I was unable to stay in touch with her after she became ill in August.

As to his suggested price in his promotional letter of $200 for the strip of 5 stamps this appraisal would now be quite dated but wonder how that may compare to today's similar type errors. Any further comments and ideas on this from SoR members would be welcomed.

If all of the green is not missing, this falls into the freak category rather than being an error by normal definition. C$200 is way overboard for the stamp then and now in my opinion, despite being rather dramatic looking.

Bileski sold legitimate errors but was also big on offering dubious items. One group were the rubberstamp overprints reading GHANA on Gold Coast and even first issue Ghana stamps, at inflated prices. Specially discounted while initial supplies last. Those handstamps, where genuine, were locally-produced informational ones (at best), applied on stamps on covers, and not on stamps before application on covers. I'd also like to see some covers that are not obviously philatelic. And just why were these needed on stamps with "GHANA" already in the stamp design is beyond me.

Thanks hy- can't comment on the Ghana material. Mr Bileski was definitely a marketer, a pioneer and an interesting person. You may be interested in his bio.

https://www.saskatoonstamp.com/article_bileski.asp

Any data on freak error sales regarding your opinion would be helpful.