NEW PENNY STAMPS.

Shannon News, 30 October 1923, Page 2

NEW PENNY STAMPS.

GEOGRAPHICAIiIiY CORRECT,

While the R.M.S. Makura was on her way from Auckland to Vancouver on October 6, she picked up the following message from Wellington by wireless, publishing it in her " Wireless News " next morning.— "The new postage stamp, which has been issued in. New Zealand and which bears the map of New Zealand upon it, is considered to have been rather hurriedly produced There is a new issue to be printed which will be a more accurate copy." A' " New Zealand Times " reporter submitted the report to the Post and Telegraph Department, and was officially informed that the stamps were printed from a plate made in New Zea land, which was the usual thing with the. first issues of a, new stamp. The die is then sent to England, and a specially hardened steel plate is made from which all subsequent issues arc printed. The plates made in New Zealand are not sufficiently hardened to run off the many/ hundreds of thousands required but are hard enough to print off the first requirements. An Auckland contemporary had sug gested that the South Island had been pushed over to enable the designer to get it on the stamp, but the " Times " man was assured that this was incorrect, and that the map was geographically correct, -although it did not show all the fiords and bays, as that was impossible on such a small scale map. The may, however, does show the Auckland Gulf, Napier Bight, and Banks Peninsula.

The department also considers that the new stamp will be a good advertisement for New Zealand and will help to remove the misapprehension that New Zealand is part of Australia or adjacent to Australia. When the new steel plate arrivos from England all future issues of the stamp will b e printed from it.