North Vietnam, For Military Personell 1969, November 15th, 1969; Michel Nr. M15; A single stamp with the inscription Thu’o’ng Binh (Invalids) was produced by the Tien Bo Printing House in sheets of 100 stamps and in perforation 11.0.
Here is the mint stamp.
Here is the cancelled to order stamp with the typical Hanoi quarter cancel.
This stamp was not officially released imperforate however a very small number of imperforate trial proofs have come to market. Here is one of them. Note the positional markings surrounding the stamp.
The editor has also obtained a mint stamp (so far unlisted) that carries a red hand stamp “Tem Noi Bo” (Stamp of the Interior Department). It is not clear if this overprint is genuine or someone’s attempt to produce a forgery. Intuitively it makes little sense to put a red overprint on an already red stamp.
Detail of the affected area.
So far the editor has only be able to locate a single postally used cover carrying this stamp which is rather unusual for a stamp that was issued as late as 1969. It is not clear why this should be the case but clearly this stamp did not find much postal usage. Also all cancelled copies are of the CTO type as shown above. The editor recently acquired a single franking letter with the stamp from the Klewitz/Duering collection but it looks philatelically inspired.
The editor was able to acquire the only known non-philatelic cover that is known of this stamp (ex Crenshaw, SICP Member). It is on a home made envelope and the stamp looks pretty ratty. It was mailed from Hai Hung in August of 1971 to Ha Tay. Very rare.
Registration Nr. 101701
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