Virtual Stamps

[gabriel 1 10]

A seller of the Virtual Stamp on Bid or Buy gives a very good description of the stamp, with the backround and History. He goes into detail on how much such stamps have sold for, both blank and with value printed on them.

 

Although these were trials, they were used for postage and thus form part of our Postal History. It would appear that Stamp Dealers turned their backs on the stamp as not many are seen in the market place. Prof Franco Frescura, Kwa Zulu Natal Philatelic Society wrote a long article for The South African Philatelist, listing a whole host of problems experienced with the Virtual Stamp. Problems range from co-operation or lack thereof by the SA Post Office, Philatelic Services and Catalogue compilers. Problems with paper, records and security issues were also covered in his article. All seems as if there was alot of red tape surrounding this stamp.

 

Further to the above, our SACC gives very little info or guidance on the stamp, no values etc, see page 342. The stamp seems to be quite scarce and there are collectors prepared to pay top dollar in order to have these in their collections.

 

My question is, what happened to all these stamps? Philatelic Services claim that 83000 were produced, 80000 distributed to the trial Post Offices and 3000 kept for internal trials. Surely with the amount produced, these would be seen more often than is actually the case. Is it just me?, am I imagining things or just looking in the wrong places?

 

Regards

Gabriel1