A donkey stumbles…
A very well-known proverb: a donkey doesn't stumble twice over the same stone. And three times? Of course not! Or does it? With postmarks, the same error occurred three times in a row. The abbreviation Gld. for the province of Gelderland in postmarks sometimes caused problems.
When manufacturing stamps, everything must be done in mirror image. A mistake is easily made if the letter d needs to be included in the stamp and one uses the letter b, which reads as a d in mirror image. In the stamp impression, that letter then becomes a b. This happened for the first time with the stamp for Loenen op de Veluwe, which was produced in November 1940. Apparently, no one noticed that a mistake had been made, as the stamp remained in use until March 23, 1950.
The second time things went wrong was with the stamp for Nijkerkerveen in 1948. Here too, the letter b was included instead of the letter d. This stamp remained in use up to and including October 6, 1969.
The third time, something went wrong with the stamp for Bruchem. This stamp was used up to and including August 9, 1979. It is a mystery that no one ever noticed this!
It is indeed remarkable that this was never noticed before, or perhaps better said, that no one took the trouble to return them sooner. And to think that, strictly speaking, the province designations weren't even necessary. At least in the era of the large circular system, it was customary to only place province designations after a place name if there were multiple places with (virtually) the same name. Later, for a certain period, the provinces were included by default. Quite handy, in a time when there were no postal codes yet, to know that Bruchem, for example, is located in Gelderland.