An Explosive Unissued Stamp
On 4 August 2020, at 6:07 PM, I remember being in my office in Jdeidet El Matn, a suburb of Beirut, with my friend H. M. when the explosion occurred. My race to Beirut and the aftermath is a personal and family chronicle etched in my memory.
The explosion killed 218 people and injured 7,000. Numerous demonstrations were subsequently organized in support of the injured and the homeless, both spontaneous and official. Among others, at the request of collectors, LibanPost was asked to issue a commemorative stamp to commemorate the tragic event.
Normally the stamp issuance process involves a fairly lengthy bureaucratic process, which in this case, for obvious reasons, was bypassed. The mandatory publication of the stamp issue in the official Lebanese newspaper was not made, because both the Ministry of Telecommunications and LibanPost tacitly sponsored the fast issue.
The issue was widely publicized through flyers by LibanPost (above). Issued on 12 October 2020, LibanPost certified a print run of 30,000 mini sheets.
This is a souvenir mini sheet with face value of 10,000 Lebanese Pounds depicting the impressive explosion of the warehouse containing the infamous Ammonium Nitrate in the Port of Beirut.
It has two small seals visible under Wood’s light, is gummed, un-perforated, and printed on non-fluorescent paper. Its large size, 12 x 9 centimeters, immediately discourages the use on mail. Needless to say, they were all happily sold.
I recently had the fortunate opportunity to examine and analyze some stamps of 5 x 3.9 cm (below), a fairly common format for Lebanese stamp issues, with the same subject but with a face value of 5,000 Lebanese Pounds.
They are also printed in four-colors on un-gummed non-fluorescent paper, without seals visible under a Wood’s light, perforated 13¼ x 13½.
From a careful examination of the specimens, I believe they are from a single sheet of 24 specimens arranged in six strips of four stamps, each separated by a perforate space (above).
I have prepared a reconstruction sheet (above) using special software and everything leads me to believe it is printed proof of unissued stamp.
So, practical reasons but also sensible on the country’s situation have deprived us of a philatelic witness to the catastrophe which, with his small format, would have reached easily on envelope every corner of the globe.
Bernardo Longo
