2018-05-07 Mon

Good news for Indian Philatelist. A modern Indian stamp has entered in a house of a rarity.

A1992 stamp belonging to the 'birds of prey' series is a quite spectacular realization for a modern error. The Rs2 stamp was misprinted with a Re1 denomination. Moreover, the stamp got the Hindi name of the bird incorrect. Besides its Latin name, the stamp labelled the bird as 'Shahin Kohila', which is the Hindi name for a falcon. The Osprey's Hindi name is 'macchlimar'.

Stamps from this 1992 Osprey series have shown up at multiple auctions with colour errors too, where the blue colour of the sky in the background had spread on to the bird's wings. The flawed stamps were made part-of-year packs, and when the error was detected, they were withdrawn immediately. The value error is extremely rare, as only four such stamps are known to exist.

The catalogue price of this stamp was just £1,000. However, it was sold for £16,172 at Stanley Gibbons' 15 June 2011 sale in London.

Image Courtesy: https://findyourstampsvalue.com