20. Anniversary of the Battle at Dien Bien Phu

North Vietnam, 20. Anniversary of the Battle at Dien Bien Phu, May 7th, 1974, Michel Nr. 759-760; Two stamps both with a 12 xu nominal value were printed together in the same sheet. The stamps were perforated 11.0.

Here is the mint set:

There are some tonal issues that occurred during stamp production. Here is a mint pair that shows a much lighter blue color than the pair above. However these were likely not caused by using a different paint but by how much of the blue paint was guided to the printing plate.

Below is a strip of six mint stamps that shows how the stamps were arranged in the sheet.

These stamps were not officially released im-perforated but a handful of imperforate trial prints have come to market:

There are a fairly large number of small production flaws that occur on this issue. So, sometimes, the two projectiles at the end of the rocket launch, that can be seen at the top left of the stamp, are missing, like on this enlargement:

Other times there are small amounts of paint missing (see red surface above) or small objects have fallen on the printing plate creating images like this yellow “C”. All of these small flaws can be detected on the strip of six above.

The entire print run was apparently made using the same plates which caused significant plate wear towards the end of production. Below is a partial scan of two rows of ten stamps. The entire strip shows significant plate wear as is demonstrated in the zoom images below:

Especially the red color print run was susceptible to poor printing quality

Rare express mail letter sent to Klewitz on the First Day Issuance in West Germany. The letter also carries the special cachet that was produced for the occasion. Rather playful use of the Dien Bine Phu stamps from 1954/1956 and 1964. The old stamps had already been devalued on March 1st, 1959 by 1,000:1 which meant that the 60 Dong the two values initially represented were only worth 0.06 New Dong in 1974. The over-all postage of the letter only amounted to 57.06 Dong which is short of the proper tariff for a standard express mail letter (Tariff 1.00). The under-franking was apparently not noticed in Vietnam and Germany and the letter was delivered without postage due charges. Fulda arrival cancel on the reverse.

Mixed franking of the Dien Bien Phu set together with the Women Movement and Liberation of Hanoi sets paying an overall postage of 72 xu on a domestic letter sent from Quan 5 to Him City in July of 1981.