papakuma 28 Dec 2018 09:13:15pm | re: Israel mystery 4
The first stamp set of Israel, termed the Doar Ivri series, has a host of fascinating stories attached to it. Your question brings up one of the more interesting. Up to that time as you are aware, nearly every printed stamp around the world was a sheet of singles encircled by selvage (the extra unprinted paper around the stamps. These first stamps were felt to be so important that the Postal Minister of the Jewish Agency, David Remez, felt that an explanatory inscription was needed. Therefore these sheets of 10 x 10 stamps expanded the size of the bottom selvage for this purpose into what we now term tabs.
The stamps themselves were printed by normal lithographic plates, to which along the bottom a separate plate with the 10 tabs was added, Unfortunately, these latter were made of the much softer metal, lead, and therefore needed to periodically be replaced as they were worn down. As a result the last 15,000 sheets of the first plate run were printed on grey-ish thick paper with the wrong tab! This represents nearly 10% of all the 10 millieme stamps.
Specifically the inscription should have been the 5 lines of Hebrew describing the depicted coin
(bronze coin from the period of the first Revolt: year 3). Instead the 4 line tab for the 15 millieme stamp was mistakenly substituted (coin from the period of the second Revolt: year 2 for the redemption of Israel.
Not to be outdone, the same situation arose with the 15 millieme stamp (13,000 sheets of the second plate or about 7% of all 15 mil stamps). Here the 6 line inscription of the 50 millieme stamp (coin from the period of the second Revolt which reads: year 2 for the redemption of Israel) was mistakenly substituted for the normal 4 line inscription.
By the way, the currency of the State of Israel had not yet been named at the time of the printing. That is why there is no symbol of currency on the stamp. At the initial issuing of the Doar Ivri stamps, the currency was milliemes, but by the next year was changed to putout.
As always, corrections, amendments and comments are welcome.
Joel in Minnesota
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ikeyPikey
28 Dec 2018 09:34:33pm | re: Israel mystery 4
"... These first stamps were felt to be so important that the Postal Minister ... felt that an explanatory inscription was needed ..."
That is the most generous, open-minded, warm-hearted, and downright sweet explanation I have ever heard for the tabs.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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