Fraudster unmasked

As a collector of postal items from Great Britain, it is always nice to receive an envelope with something special about it. At first glance, that specialness is not striking. A registered letter from Preston (Lancashire) sent on October 5, 1959. Franked with simple stamps from the so-called Wilding series featuring images of Queen Elizabeth II. But why is the 1 pence (1d) stamp partially pasted over the 3 pence (3d) stamp? What does that black spot on Elizabeth's neck mean? With a scanner, you can significantly enlarge images of stamps. Toon Hermans would say: until the smudge gets bigger! Such a smudge does not appear on the original stamp.

The stamps were, however, issued by some postal services of British territories. After searching for a while, I came across a stamp that did not have that spot, but an overprint in the shape of the number 3 and the value denomination in Annas. The stamp had been issued by the British Postal Administration in the independent Sultanate of Muscat in Eastern Arabia. With that, the mystery was solved. The sender of the letter was apparently a collector. He sent a registered letter to the Philately Department (Stamp Bureau) of the Exeter post office. Perhaps he (or she) had put money in it to buy stamps for the collection. But this collector apparently did not have a 3 pence stamp on hand to pay the rate and duty for the registered letter. So, he simply affixed the Muscat stamp and, to make it inconspicuous, pasted the 1 pence stamp over the overprint. Unfortunately (or should I say, fortunately?) not inconspicuous enough for me. Apparently it was for the official who stamped the postal item. He hadn't seen it! And so the deceiver was unmasked after all.