SAINT VINCENT BEQUIA
1986 60TH BIRTHDAY OF QUEEN ELIZABETH II STAMP ISSUES

Information and Reference of What was Found in the Format Archive and Elsewhere

Varieties and Proofs

Would YOU store YOUR specialized 1986 60th Birthday of Queen Elizabeth II varieties this way?

Information on this series is changing as more information is being discovered. This page and associated pages will be updated as more information is made available.

The 1986 60th Birthday of Queen Elizabeth II stamps issued for Saint Vincent Bequia are a beautiful set and very colorful.
The series was quite a production for the Format Security Printers requiring a higher number of color stages to produce the final stamps. Due to this higher number of stages the opportunity for more varieties was inevitable and did occur. Usually stamp production ranged from 7 to 9 color stages. With this series there 11 stages due to the framing of the design.

There is no information on the actual quantities produced of varieties and such but we can pretty much assert that the practices of production for other series including the Leaders of the World Automobiles and Locomotives and the Royal Wedding series should coincide with this series as well. Due to the standard principles involved with production of stamps depicting royalty the practices would be the same for this series.

In my recovery of the Saint Lucia and Tuvalu side of the police evidence stock I also received a portion of the progressive color proofs for the souvenir sheets from all the countries involved in this series. With Saint Lucia a major portion. With the Tuvalu and Islands what remained was very small. I fear now that most has been lost or destroyed very probably by terrible storage conditions.
In the recovery some were found in packets which moisture had penetrated and basically destroyed them all. Some were still wet! As if stored in a cellar! Even moldy!

In the acquisitions of the Bileski estate I got several lots of panes of the missing color varieties, perforation varieties, watermark varieties and gum varieties. These being found in the printers archive. Even some of these were torn, wrinkled and damaged in ways from storage in the archive.
I therefore submit to you that apparently some varieties because of these conditions have now become very limited as to what the collector can obtain and thus have become increasingly of higher value. Try to find certain varieties of these on the market and you will find it nearly impossible to impossible to obtain!

On this page I will try to break down what was produced, estimated quantities and valuation of the material.
I will use 2 sections to do this. First being the single stamp issues, secondly the souvenir sheet.

Let's get started!

SECTION 1

THE PERFORATED SINGLE STAMP VARIETIES


I will base the quantities produced on the standards used for other series mainly being the 1986 Royal Wedding Omnibus Series which obviously came out right after this series. Over and over again in the documentation recovered from the trials and directly from the printer the quantities produced for varieties is generally always the same.
Interestingly enough as I stated in the introduction page for this series the progressive color proof Presentation Folders were not allowed to be reprinted due to the reprint agreement excluding this from happening. Therefore in my opinion the progressives were only printed once.

This is an image of the advertisement made in the Urch Harris Commonwealth Stamp Catalog made back in 1987-88 for the 1986 Saint Vincent Bequia 60th Birthday Stamps and Souvenir Sheet and varieties.

More varieties have been found since this ad but it gives you an idea of what was available and pricing at the time.

For the normal issue being a popular topic and highly collected the quantities produced for the normal issue was around 40-50,000 sets. I base this on quantities produced for LOW trains and cars for Bequia and quantities produced for Royal Wedding issues.
Noting that the normal sets for Bequia are not as readily offered as one would think. There is a reason...they are getting scarcer.

I find there to be a controversy with the catalog values. In the Urch Harris catalog Saint Vincent normal sets for this issue are priced at £5.50 whereas for the Dependencies the price for normal sets is £5-5.25.
So what is the controversy? Scott catalog lists the set for Saint Vincent at $7.00+ and lists the dependencies at $3-5.00.
Stanley Gibbons lists the set today for Saint Vincent at £1.40 and lists the Grenadines at £1.60. They do not list Bequia and Union Island which in my opinion really should be changed. So you see there is a conflict in valuation of the sets.

Pricing should run at $6-7.00 for this set. Not many places are offering it.

I have not seen any uncut press sheets of this issue.

NORMAL PERFORATED "SPECIMEN" OVERPRINTED STAMPS

Documentation and evidence show that:
Based on practices of the printer for other series 2,000 sets of specimen overprinted stamps were produced.
These are sold in various locations on the market. This shows that most were basically retained.

Pricing should run between $5-7.00 a set.

PERFORATED VARIETIES

It appears that there are none.

That basically sums up the perforated varieties.

THE IMPERFORATE VARIETY

Standard print orders and practices were for 5,000 imperforate sets. Another 3,000 would be produced for the progressive color proofs.
Please be very careful when purchasing singles as some perforated stamps have been tampered with cutting off the perforations to make them look like imperforates.
These appear to be very scarce on the market. Presently only a sparse showing on the internet.

Pricing cannot be obtained.

PROGRESSIVE COLOR PROOFS

At present aside from the above imaged color proof it appears nothing is out there! Standard practice was to print 3,000 sets of the progressives.
The $8 value in Presentation Folder is offered by Rushstamp at a very high price. At £95.00 it shows not many exist. It is possible they are in the Saint Vincent side of the police evidence stock and have not been presented for sale...yet. Possibly they too may have been destroyed. Time will tell.

Pricing cannot be calculated at this time due to the scarcity of available items in this category.

SECTION 2

THE SOUVENIR SHEET

Following is the rundown of what was produced in regards to the souvenir sheet.

THE PERFORATED SOUVENIR SHEET

Documentation and evidence shows that:
At present at least 5,000 copies of this issue were produced. Probably more.
This is based on the following evidence found in the St. Lucia holding.

1.) 3,000 copies have been found in the police evidence.

2.)These are for sale by numerous internet sellers and stamp dealers.

3.)One dealer of Format Material (mentioning no names) is selling bulk lots of 5 seeming to have many copies. This is a popular series collected by many collectors and thematic collectors thus demand is higher.

Because of these factors pricing for this souvenir sheet should run at average Scott listed pricing of $4-5.00.

THE IMPERFORATE SOUVENIR SHEET

Documentation and evidence shows that:
At present based on practices of the printer at the time 2,000 imperforate souvenir sheets were made.
Another 1,500 were produced with the progressive color proofs. I have acquired around 1600 via the police evidence. These are not available on the market except for mine.

In accordance pricing should be around $10-15.00 each.

THE PERFORATED AND IMPERFORATE SOUVENIR SHEET WITH SPECIMEN OVERPRINT

Imperforate Specimen Overprinted Souvenir Sheet

Documentation and evidence show that:
At present based on practices of the printer at the time 1,000 of each were made.
I have acquired around 400 imperforate SPECIMEN overprinted souvenir sheets via the police evidence.
The imperforate variety is not available on the market except for mine.

UPDATE!
Perforated Specimen Overprinted Souvenir Sheet in Wesminster Collection

Recently (2016) a fellow collector notified me of having all the perforated SPECIMEN overprinted sets in a Westminster specialized collection. In a recent search on eBay I found a recent previous sold lot of this issue with the souvenir sheet with SPECIMEN overprints showing us that they exist. Possibly being broken from the same such collections. The numbers that exist are still unknown. A possible pack of them could still be out there unopened. The packs contain 500 copies and with these there were two packs that would be ordered.
At this time rarity is equal to imperforates at least. Because of demand at present though pricing for either is around $3-5.00.

In accordance pricing for the either version should be around $10-15.00.

THE PROGRESSIVE COLOR PROOFS OF THE SOUVENIR SHEET

Documentation and evidence show that:
At present based on practices of the printer at the time 1,500 progressive color proof sets of the souvenir sheets were made.
I have acquired only around 25 each of 4 stages via the police evidence. It is probable the rest are lost forever. As stated earlier I found around 1600 of the finals. I found that one seller on eBay based out of Latvia did have a set which is imaged above. It is possible they have more but this one set was sold some time ago and this seller usually relists such within weeks if he has more. One Royal Wedding set I purchased from him was never relisted and he stated to me he had no more therefore you can see getting your hands on these is most difficult unless you are lucky enough to spot it at the right time. I note this set was missing the 7th stage (brown before black added).

Pricing should be around $75-100.00 for each set unless more are recovered which is now doubtful.

A note on the above progressives:
You may have noticed there are two all colors proofs on many sets. This is because the full progressive color proof set has 9 stages. The eighth stage is the black addition. This particular set contains the 8th stage but is missing the 7th stage. Many progressive color proof sets from many different issues have been and are being sold without this stage present thus they are not complete sets.
I have also noticed that the final color progressives for other country souvenir sheets are sometimes being sold as an error as it does not have the inscriptions. This is not correct. It would only be an error if it was perforated.

At this time there is no evidence that any types of errors were made for this particular souvenir sheet.

This basically sums up the stamp varieties for the Saint Vincent Bequia 1986 60th Birthday of Queen Elizabeth II Omnibus series. As new information and evidence is found it will be added to this page.

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