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The rhinoceros with the yellow point.
It is when a penfriend has sent me a damaged stamp that I have came to observe the details of its design: Namibia, 1997, value: N$5. This stamp is designed by Denis Murphy, very wellknown, and also awarded, for the drawing of many stamps of his country, South Africa.
This damaged stamp was my 5th of that
kind. Good number to start comparisons...
What was my surprise when I have seen, on this stamp whose
quality wasn't good enough to be part of an album, a yellow
point, hidden in the blue background of the illustration ! What a
pity, I thought: if it is a variety, it's on a damaged stamp that
I have it... With luck, no. On one out of the four others was the
yellow point again, on the right of the printed N$5 value. Well;
two exemplars out of five... It musn' t be a rare stamp! No
matter, here is a new element of my topic !
The same day, I have sent a message at the e-mail address of the namibian philatelic site www.namibstamps.com ; no more than two days had passed when I got precisions about what I had asked for: the 'why' of the existence of this variety, its regularity, etc...
Here are the elements of the answer
they have had the gentleness of giving me:
This stamp is issued in sheetlets of 10. One stamp out of 4
sheetlets could show this printing error. That could mean: 1 out
of 40 stamps is concerned.
Thus, pairs can be found with one stamp with the yellow point, attached to another without it (First stamp of the 2nd row of the mini-sheet of 10 rhino-stamps):
(Thanks to Chris Du Plessis, Brian Basson and Manfred Förg)
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