Saturday, October 27, 2007

S6 - Greetings from the United Nations (60th Anniversay of UN)


The 60th Anniversary of UN Generic sheet was the first United Nations personalized stamp sheet issued to pay the 80¢ international air mail rate in effect at the time. The sheet was issued on 3 March 2005 (the same date the Student sheet was issued). The 30mm x 30mm stamps are listed as Scott 880-884 and pin perforated 13.2. It is possible that these sheets were also printed by the Banknote Corporation of America using offset lithography, but that has not yet been confirmed by UNPA.

During the release of these sheets at the ASDA show in New York City, it was discovered that some contained a rather startling error - one stamp (884 "Sphere within a Sphere") in the sheet was actually denominated 37¢. This occurs twice with in each sheet and is the bottom stamp in the first row, and the 4th stamp in the second row:

Once this error was discovered, the sheets were quickly withdrawn from sale for inspection. UNPA estimated that about 50 sheets with the error had been sold, before resuming sales of the normal sheet. These sheets are designated S6.1. They also contain another rather remarkable error. There are six official languages for the United Nations, and German is not one of them. Shown on the sheet are the words "United Nations" in seven different languages, including the German "Vereinte Nationen." Note that this has been removed in the top personalized sheet.

Some confusion over a possible third variety of this sheet was raised when the following sheet pre-release scan was issued by UNPA and published in Vol. 29, issue #2 of the UNP Journal:

Apparently, this sheet also contained the Vereinte Nationen error, but has normal 80¢ Scott 884 stamps. It also has another error; instead of the word "Greetings", is the word "Greeting". After a lot of research, this sheet does not seem to exist in collector's hands and was withdrawn from sale at Napex 2005 (where it was first discovered) before any were actually sold. About 10 sheets were destroyed.

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