THE NEW STAMPS

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 126, 24 November 1932, Page 15

THE NEW STAMPS

READY IN SIX MONTHS ■

CONTRACT LET

Many people hoped that the Dominion's* new pictorial stamps would be ready this; year so that they could' be placed on letters posted Home for Christmas; but they were ignorant of the work entailed in making the plates and of the many details that have to be carefully _ considered before tliere can bo produced a set of stamps really well done.:- Aa a matter of fact, it will probably.be six months before the new stamps are on sale.

In a statement to <'The Post" to-day Mr. G. McNamara, Secretary of the Post and Telegraph Department, said that the tender of Messrs. Waterlow and Sons • (London) had been accepted for the production by photogravure of the new stamps. The new ninepenny stamp, however, the one bearing the Maori design, will be lithographed, as the design is not suitable for engraving- or photogravure.

The* same firm, which carries out much of the world's stamp-making, was responsible for the original printings.of the first pictorial series of stamps which New Zealand issued some thirty-five years ago. At that time pictorial stamps were something of a novelty in the philatelic world, and New Zealand set an example which has since been widely followed by stamp-issuing countries. On that occasion an error was made in the blue twopence-halfpenny value, Lake Wakatipu ' being spelt "Wakitipu." Such was the demand for this stamp because of this error that it was printed in large enough numbers to make it almost as common as the stamp on which the name was correctly spelt, the correction being made within a few months. Every possible care is to be taken -with the forthcoming set to see that no errors in the stamps are allowed to creep in", and the task of doing this is not made any easier by the distance of the makers of the plates fvom the Dominion.

The competition recently held for designs for new air' stamps for the Dominion was not altogether a success. None of the designs submitted was deemed to lie quite what was aimed at. so it will be some time yet, before New. Zealand has any new air mail stamps..