Venezuela AR39 stamp — The newly listed ‘AR39’. Worth paying attention to…

It’s taken a while but Scott is now recognizing Venezuela’s postal fiscals (or postage and revenue stamps) in the 2017 edition of its Classic Specialized Catalogue.

This bumps up the number of stamps listed during the classic period to a further 67 items, all of them now prefixed under an “AR” code. AR1 through to AR26 are overprints of the 1893 ‘Instruccion’ series (with the usual smattering of inverts) whereas those following were printed in their own right. The later stamps are all easily identifiable by the words ‘Instruccion’ or ‘Timbre Fiscal’ included within the design.

Issued between 1900 and 1922, Venezuela was already well known for using fiscal stamps in the Escuelas series of issues (see next month’s post).

All of the new listings are priced at nominal amounts with the odd $10 or $20 stamp.

Double-check copies of the 1911 1 Bolivar Green

However, pay attention to AR39, the 1 Bolivar Green from 1911, illustrated above. There is a variety without the name ‘Bello’ shown below the portrait. Blanco (the Venezuelan specialized catalogue) has this priced at eighty times the regular issue. The variety is unlisted in Scott, SG or Michel.

And note the inverted triangle next to the V in this example. In many countries, this would be a listed variety in its own right…

This brings the total number of major listings up to 1940 in Scott (including local posts) to 661 items. In comparison, Gibbons covers 673 major listings within the same time period whereas Michel leads the pack with 872.