PHILATELIr,
BULLETIN.
Issued by the Authority of the Director-General, Post & Telegraph Department, Wellington, C.1, New Ze!!land. No.3. 1•
18th December. 1952.
Provisional Issue: ~d.- The inLtial postage rate on letters posted in New Zealand on an after the 1st January, 1953, will be - Inland and British Empire p 3d. for the first oz, a~d id, for each additional oz.; Foreign, 4d. for the first OZ, and 2!d. for each additional oz. As present stocks of the 3d. denomination will be insufficient to meet the estimated demand until further supplies are obtained from England a quantity of the current id. stamps (King George VI) has been overprinted "3d.". No actual date of ~ssue for these stamps has been fixed but they are being placed on sale as stocks of the current 3d. denomination become exhausted. As soon as additional supplies of the 3d. King George VI stsmp are received from the printers in England the provisional issue will be withdrawn. Up to the date of this publication sheets from the following plates have been overprinted:Plate Nos. 108, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118 •••• In many instances the plate number has been partially cut off owing to the need for trimming the sheets before overprinting. Each item of postal stationery will be suitably overprinted to comply with the new rates,
2.
King George VI stamis,- In its issue of the 20th June p 1952, the philatelic journal Stamp Collecting" (London) carried an advertisement offering for sale a block of sixteen imperforate id. King George VI stamps, The New Zealand Post Office therefore asked the High Commissioner in London to make inqUiries into this matter. Prior to that date, however, the New Zealand Society of Great Britain had notified the stamp printers concerned that imperforate stamps of the id. denomination were being offered for sale. The printers immediately instituted inquiries and, as a result of their investigations, placed the matter in the hands of the police. Later a man WBS charged at the Marylebone Police r,ourt with receiving these stamps knowIng them to have been stolen. He was convicted and sentenced to six months' imprisonment. Ultimately, 46 imperforate copies of the stamps (which are believed to have been printed in 1947 from plate 128) were recovered. As it is probable that a full sheet was stolen, 194 copies of the stamp have not yet been accounted for. r-ollectors are warned against purchasing any of these stamps; or any of the imperforate pictorial stamps of 1935-47; or any stamps from the printer's waste of the Islands series of 1920 and 1932, none of which have official recognition, since they were not issued by the Post Office. Persons trading in or sttempting to dispose of any or these stamps are liable to prosecution, Coronation Issue.- To conform with the increase in postage rates referred to in paragraph 1, it has been necessary to change certain values in this issue as well as to transpose the designs of the 2d. and 3d, denominations. The ...