Se-Tenant stamps

In the years that we are busy with motorcycle stamps, many different forms of the subject of our collection appeared.
A type of stamps that is in advance just over the last few years is the Se-Tenant, in other words printed together. This regards different images on individual stamps, but together forming one unity. Although different motorcycle stamps next to each other that share teeth also form a unity, we mean in this special case that the image is running over from one stamp to the other.
Speaking in general many of this kind of stamps have been printed before 1985, but for us one of the first was the connected set from India in 1986, issued on the occasion of 125 years Indian Police.

On the stamp, just over the center perforation, a police officer on a motorcycle has been printed. It is not possible to see exactly what type of motorcycle it concerns, but most probably the Rajdoot 350 (a clone of the Yamaha RD350, built in India by the Escort Group) has served as model for this stamp.

The Rajdoot 350 in police trim

By the way, this connected set is one of the items with the fastest increase in value in our collection. India is becoming an explosively growing collectors country, and for a neat set of these stamps the catalogue value is nowadays not less than 14 euro. The FDC's with this issue know an even larger increase in value.
For a less well-known first day cancellation like Visakapathnam or Pune, on the Gandhi envelop (on the official FDC a text is printed that Ghandi read out in Calcutta on August 21st 1947, in which he proclaimed the same value to all kinds of religious people) you have to pay 30 euro or more.

FDC on Ghandi envelop, stamped in Pune

Once I started to collect one piece of each FDC-cancellation of this issue, but when I heard from an Indian fellow collector the number of cancellations I quickly dropped the idea. At the time of the issue there were more than 46 philatelic offices in the immense big India, all in different places and all using their own cancellation stamp. And next to that there were 2 number stamps at the philatelic service in Bombay, the present Mumbay. I have something like ten of them, and this will be it.

Also from iran we have a comparable stamp, and that one is special because of all the printing varieties that exist. Many spectacular colour and image shifts can be found on internet.

The varieties in colour and the image shifts are very clear. Also for these stamps high prices are asked which are, looking at the ample availabilty, not justified.

But okay, the name of these things: Se-Tenant stamps.

Hans de Kloet

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