David Lindwall
11/3/2018 10:02 AM
In the early 1970's I remember seeing in Linn's Weekly an add offering singles and blocks of Guatemala C461 (the ten centavo air mail stamp of 1971 commemorating the centennial of the Liberal Revolution) with two of the four colors inverted. The asking price was scandalous. El Quetzal Vol 24, No. 192 of January 1973 has a photo of the stamp (which looks like it was copied from the Linn's add) and an article suggesting that a sheet of the invert was purchased by a postal patron at a suburban Guatemala City post office and sold to a named stamp dealer. While the article doesn't fully endorse the stamp as a legitimate error, neither does it mention that the named stamp dealer is known to have had a close relationship with the Director of the Philatelic Department of the Post Office in Guatemala City, and that that Philatelic Director had a side business selling contemporary "errors" that were widely thought at the time to have been produced specially for him by Tipografia Nacional. The C461 invert was, without a doubt, the most intrepid philatelic production of that era and might well have been the straw that broke the camel's back as the Philatelic Director was sacked shortly thereafter.
To me the more amazing thing is that I have never seen this stamp for sale, at auction or on eBay in that past 47 years. Presumably a sheet of 30 was produced and some of those stamps must have found their way into collectors' hands. Do any of you have this stamp in your collection or have seen it for sale or on exhibit?