1. Five Year Plan (3. Issue)

North Vietnam, 1. Five Year Plan, February 25th, 1963, Michel Nr. 249-250; Two additional stamps were issued to commemorate the Five Year Plan in the nominals of 12 xu each. Perforation was 11.0. Belowis the official Xunhasaba bulletin that announced the issuance of the set.

Here is the mint set. Note the vertical size difference between the two stamps.

Mint set in blocks of four:

A printing error is known on one of the values where all of the brown color is missing. This error is listed in Michel but at €25 inadequately valued. The error is ex Klewitz and the editor has not seen this error offered in the market over the past 25 years outside the Klewitz collection-

Very rare local letter sent to Thai Nguyen with the first value. Adequately franked at 12 xu (national letter rate). Hanoi machine cancel.

Rare single franking of the blue-green stamp on a letter to a State owned company in East Germany.

Postcards to East Germany only cost 6xu but this appears to have not been known widely as there are quite as there are plenty of postcards where the sender paid the letter rate of 12xu.

Rare single franking of the red 12 xu stamp on a letter sent to the Soviet Union in April of 1963. Early Hanoi machine cancel. Moscow airport cachet on front. Moscow arrival company on the reverse.

Letter of the second value sent one day after issuance to Klewitz in West Germany. The letter was actually under franked as the tariff to West germany required 50 xu of postage but the sender duped the postal clerk into thinking it was actually intended for East Germany (= CHDC Duc). So for theclearl the 12 xu rate to a fellow socialist country was actually fine.

Here is another letter with the exact same franking but in this case everything is proper. The letter is addressed to East Germany and carries the correct 12 xu rate. It is not exactly known what the stamp like hand stamp on the left was intended for, however, it was most likely used to create a complete sending record so that any lost letters could be detected.

Very rare local letter using a single franking of the 12xu stamp on a latter from Hai Phong to Hanoi. Most local letters were destroyed in the decades long war, the tropical climate or recycling, so very few of them survive today.

Mixed franking of the 12xu Five Year Plan series featuring the set plus one of the 6xu Agricultural Products for an overall postage of 30xu. The official letter rate to Western countries (like England) was actually 50xu so this letter is under-paid by 20xu but no postage due notes were added.

Very rare letter (ex Klewitz) that features the souvenir sheet among other Vietnamese stamps (including the 12 xu 1.Five Year Plan set). Souvenir sheets on postally used covers are very rare. The editor has only seen one other postally used letter with this souvenir sheet. Overall postage applied of 1.13 Dong. The required postage to West Germany was 1.1 (50 xu base letter rate, 60 xu registration fee).

Colorful mixed franking on a rare registered letter made up of three of the 12xu Democratic Republic stamps, two of the 40xu Lunar Calendar stamps, three Five Year Plan stamps of both sets and three of the 30xu GANEFO Games stamps for an overall postage of 2.78D. The letter was sent from Hanoi to a newspaper editor in East Germany in May of 1964.

Registered letter sent from Quan 5 (Ho Chi Minh City) to Klewitz in January of 1982. The letter carries Reforestation Michel Nr. 1188 in two different color tones plus a Five Year Plan stamp for an overall postage of 8.20 Dong. Green Fulda custom cachet on front.