A Missing Color Error in the Uruguay National Anthem Stamp

Stamps that have major, consistent, and unintentional deviation from the normal stamps are considered errors. Postage stamp errors are sometimes caused during stamp printing process. Error stamps do not show the intended appearance of the desired stamp design.

There are factors that cause postage stamp errors like wrong denominations, wrong or missing colors, misplaced or an inverted design element, missing parts of the stamp design, wrong stamp paper, wrong watermark, double impressions, and others.

Color error postal stamp occurs when stamp is printed with wrong color(s) or one or more color is missing. These color error postal stamps usually occur when one stage of a multi-run printing process is skipped. One example of this type of error is the stamp above featuring the national anthem of Uruguay. A gold color on the edge of the score of missing. Click this to compare with the error-free stamp. The error increased the value of the stamp 100x.

The National Anthem of Galicia

"Os Pinos" (The Pine Trees) is the National anthem of Galicia. Galicia, which is in the northwest part of Spain,has roughly 2.78 million inhabitants as of 2008, with the largest concentration in two coastal areas, from Ferrol to A Coruña in the northwest from Vilagarcía to Vigo on the southwest. The capital is Santiago de Compostela, in the province of Coruña.

With its own culture, it also has its own anthem, flag and emblems. The Galician National Anthem was performed for the first time in 1907 in Havana, and in 1923 the Galician National Anthem was sung by regionalists and advocates of land reform at their meetings, and little by little became more and more accepted by many more.

The lyrics were written by Eduardo Pondal and the music composed by Pasqual Veiga. Banned during Franco's fascist regime, in 1975, during a nationalist gathering in the Festival of the Apostle, the public began to stand up as the National Anthem was sung in a very heart-moving act. A year later the custom became permanent in the Quintana Square of Santiago even though it was never ratified by the Spanish authorities. The custom is nowadays a nationalist and reivindicative act.

The stamp above featuring the score of the Galician anthem was issued in 1981.

Design Error on Philippine FDC

A postage stamp design error is a mistake made during the design phase of the postage stamp production process. Design errors most commonly occur as minor mistakes, such as a missing letter in the binomial name of an organism depicted on the stamp, but some have been major gaffes, such as a map appearing to lay claim to another country's territory, or the depiction of the wrong person on the stamp.

A design error caught during the production process may disappear quietly, with copies of the error only getting into the public's hands via unscrupulous employees (these are therefore not considered "real" stamps). Design errors are often caught during the distribution process, when large numbers of postal workers are scrutinizing the new stamp; although officials may elect to withdraw all the stamps at that point, it is very difficult to retrieve every one of them, and in these instances a few may end up being sold and used. The exact circumstance are important, because once the stamp is sold to a customer, whether or not against the postal service's rules, it is considered to be legitimate.

Somewhat rarer is a design error that is first noticed by a member of the public. This usually happens within a few days of the stamp first going on sale, usually ends up as the subject of newspaper articles, and has been known to cause a diplomatic breach. The response of postal officials may include withdrawal of all the stamps, or simply the suspension of printing and distribution, pending revision and reprinting. If the stamps are withdrawn, then the ones already out there become instant rarities, as happened with the PRC's "All China is Red" stamp of 1968. The withdrawn stamps may be destroyed or overprinted if the design can be repaired that way.

Above design error on Philippine first day cover showing the wrong date. The date around the image should have been 1551, not 1951 (400 years of Antipolo). The postmark showed the right dates.

Anthem Stamp Freaks and Errors

In philately, "errors, freaks, and oddities" or "EFO" is a blanket term referring to all the kinds of things that can go wrong when producing postage stamps. It encompasses everything from major design errors to stamps that are just poorly printed, and includes both some of the most sought-after and expensive of all stamps, and others that attract the attention of only a few specialists.

Once the yellow-inverted error of the US 1962 Dag Hammarskjöld memorial stamp was discovered, 40,270,000 were printed to prevent speculation. An error is any sort of production mistake that is (potentially) replicated on many stamps; the famous Inverted Jenny is the best known of these, having resulted from a sheet of partial prints being accidentally re-inserted into the printing press upside down for the second color, resulting in an invert error. Design errors include wrong dates, wrong names, wrong pictures, anachronisms and the like. Only the original unintentionally printed specimens are considered to be errors.

Color errors include stamps like the Treskilling Yellow which should have been green, as well as missing colors in modern multi-colored stamp s. It is not especially rare for the perforating equipment to malfunction and result in imperforate/ perforation errors.

A freak is a one-time mishap in the production process. Freaks include paper folds resulting in half-printed half-blank stamps, "crazy perfs" running diagonally across stamps, and insects embedded in stamps, underneath the ink.

An oddity is something that is within the bounds of usability for the stamp, but still has a distinctive appearance. The usual sort of oddity is misregistration on a multi-colored stamp, which can result in shirts apparently with two sets of buttons, eyes above the top of a person's head, and so forth. These can be extremely common. The Canadian Christmas stamp of 1898, depicting a map of the world with British possessions in red, is famous for unusual color oddities that appear to claim all of Europe, or the United States, or central Asia for Britain.

Postal authorities generally take some care to ensure that mistakes don't get out of the printing plant; to be valid, the EFO stamps must have been sold to a customer. Mistakes smuggled out by unscrupulous employees are called printer's waste, not recognized as legitimate stamps, and may be confiscated from collectors; the Nixon invert is a well-known recent example of an apparent new error that turned out to be simple theft by insiders. The authorities may attempt to lay hands on legitimately-sold errors, as happened with the original Inverted Jenny sheet, but usually collectors are smart enough to hang onto the windfall.

Here are a few of the stamps errors/freaks seen in anthem stamps. First is the color error from the Bolivian anthem stamps. The color should have been green instead of blue, and features the National anthem composer and lyricist. The second is a perforation error from Vietnam. You'll notice that the perforation is through the stamp and not at the edges. It shows the musical score of Vietnam's national anthem. The third is a color error of Bangladesh and India anthem composer Rabindranath Tagore. The last is a duplication error from Galicia which shows the score of the Galician anthem.

March to the Front, The National Anthem of Vietnam

Nguyen Van Cao, a noted Vietnamese writer and composer, composed "Tien quan ca" (March to the Front) in 1944 while working for an independence group. It was published in a newspaper and was well-received by the citizens, and was sung often during demonstrations and meetings of the revolutionary council. The provisional government adopted it as the anthem in 1946, becoming the anthem of North Vietnam. In 1976, when unification with South Vietnam occurred, "Tien quan ca" was adopted as the anthem for the entire nation.

Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea, referred to as East Sea, to the east. With a population of over 86 million, Vietnam is the 13th most populous country in the world.

The people of Vietnam regained independence and broke away from China in AD 938 after their victory at the battle of Bạch Đằng River. Successive dynasties flourished along with geographic and political expansion deeper into Southeast Asia, until it was colonized by the French in the mid-19th century. Efforts to resist the French eventually led to their expulsion from the country in the mid-20th century, leaving a nation divided politically into two countries. Fighting between the two sides continued during the Vietnam War, ending with a North Vietnamese victory in 1975.

Emerging from this prolonged military engagement, the war-ravaged nation was politically isolated. In 1986, the government instituted economic and political reforms and began a path towards international reintegration. By 2000, it had established diplomatic relations with most nations. Its economic growth had been among the highest in the world in the past decade. These efforts resulted in Vietnam joining the World Trade Organization in 2007.

The stamp above features the original score of the Vietnamese National anthem, issued in 1980. There are several of these stamps, some with perforation errors available in the market.