Recently, UNPA has begun selling an official cover that commemorates the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the United Nations. This cover appears to be a single and a tab from the S18 - 90c generic International United Nations personalized sheet. If the scan is not all that clear to you, it says "His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI / Visits the United Nations / 18 April 2008."
What is strange, is that the stamp and tab are on the United Nations Headquarters First Day of Issue Official Cachet. That is, until we realized that the stamps are very different. Please look closely at the detail provided in the next scan:
Here you can see, that the colors are significantly different, the lettering is thicker, and the spacing between the "U" and "N" of "UN" is also very different. Thus, we have a completely new stamp issued on 18 April 2008. This stamp is only available used; currently there are no mint sheets or singles available to collectors. If you want a complete United Nations stamp collection, you'll need to purchase this cover, unless UNPA has a change of heart.
According to Jim Matyasovich, who spoke directly with an official at UNPA, a completely new file was created for this stamp, and a completely new printing was made for this stamp. While this stamp does have a tab attached, we cannot give it a sheet listing (Snn) number, because no sheets were ever sold to the public. However, I would expect it to receive official catalog status once what you've read here is confirmed by the catalog companies.
We have no other information on the number of sheets produced. This is NOT a case where UNPA was using up non-personalized S18 sheets, and just printed the dove tab onto existing sheets. Again, this is a completely new issue.
I would like to publicly thank Helmut for the scans and first pointing out the differences between the two stamps.
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