Here’s a stamp question for you. What makes a common and inexpensive Newfoundland 1919 3c Brown Caribou stamp outrageously more valuable? If you answer: ‘the overprint’, then you are partly correct, in that the Postmaster J.A. Robinson of St. John’s overprinted 200 stamps for a special trans-Atlantic flight. Of this 200, 95 were used on covers and there were 18 defective and destroyed, so the availability of mint stamps is rare, especially when it is thought that far less than 87 actually survived – not to mention there is one in the Royal Philatelic Collection. However, the real answer to our question is that it’s the overprint and the story which lifts this stamp from £4 to £15,000.
Examples with the words ‘First Trans-atlantic Flight, for completing a trans-Atlantic flight between Newfoundland and Ireland in under 72 continuous hours.
