AN INTERESTING ZHEJIANG LOCAL SURCHARGE LABEL

Ai Li-Shan

The fun of collecting the local surcharge labels is the number of varieties that can be found. Since they were printed locally, there was not the quality control that one would expect from the stamp printers. The town of Jiaxing in Zhejiang province printed a local surcharge label in sheets of 50 (10 x 5). Each label has the same number as the upper right corner sheet number. In figure 1 is the complete sheet of 50 with a first day cancel of May 27, 1990. Figure 2 is closeup of one label from the sheet.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3 is a complete sheet of 50 with the name of the town “Jiaxing” hand stamped on each label. Figure 4 is a closeup of one label from the sheet.

Figure 3

Figure 4

In sheet No. 0004111 there is found an interesting variety – position 4/50 has an error in the number, it reads 04110 instead of 04111, figure 5. Since the sheets were numbered consequently, this mistake would not appear again. I suspect that if you check your sheets, you will find other interesting mistakes. It should be noted that the horizontal black lines and the vertical red lines are all the same from the sheets examined. Other words, so far only the one basic plate was found, with only the numbers changed.

Figure 5