Bangladesh বাংলাদেশ Over 1,600 Different Mint 1971-74 Provisional Overprints

Description

Old 1970's new issue dealer's lot of . . .
Over 1,600 different 1971-1974 Bangladesh
বাংলাদেশ Overprints on Mint Pakistan Stamps
Commemoratives, Pictorials, Definitives, and High Values
More than 1,600 different 1971-1974 Bangladesh বাংলাদেশ Independence Provisional Overprints on Pakistani Stamps, from an over 40 year old new issue stock of Fatoullah & Lazar we purchased at auction in the late 1970s and put away untouched. That's more varieties of Bangladesh overprints offered anywhere since the stamps were new issues nearly 50 years ago. Each stamp is different, with overprint variations on the former stamps from more than 97 different Bangladesh postal sub-divisions. The collection includes over 325 different overprinted commemoratives, 100's of different pictorials, definitives, officials, and more.
Due to the inability of the new Bangladesh government to issue sufficient quantities of new stamps in its own name after liberation, postal sub-divisions overprinted the various different Pakistan stamps on hand in order to have Bangladesh stamps available for mailings. Each day during that transitional period, millions of overprinted stamps were postally used on mailings, with each stamp having the distinct overprint of the local postal unit issuing them.
The stamps here are mint never hinged. However, since the Pakistani stamp stock in each separate liberated post office was locally overprinted for use, these provisional stamps received more handling by postal clerks rubberstamping the overprints than a normal stamp would have if it had just been torn from a sheet. A few may have minor faults or show signs of aging. We have provided scans of many of the stamps in this lot on hingeless sheets, but due to eBay's limitation on the number of pictures available, there remains 10 hingeless pages plus glassine envelopes, each with different overprinted stamps, we could not post.
The brutal and bloody war for the independence of Bangladesh ended on December 16, 1971 with the unconditional surrender of Pakistan to the combined forces of India and Bangladesh. An estimated 10 million Bengali refugees had fled to neighboring India, while 30 million were internally displaced. Casualty estimates vary greatly from 300,000 to 3,000,000. Stamps for millions of daily communications were needed immediately. Most East Pakistan Government officials (including Postmasters) of Bengali origin defected at first opportunity. Some districts bordering India were liberated before December 16th and the new Bangladesh post offices in those districts started functioning immediately. For example, the Jessore Head Post Office started functioning on December 8th and since no Bangladesh stamps were available, the postmaster in charge had machine printed (not rubber stamped) an overprint on nine stamps of Pakistan available in his stock and put them to public use through his subordinate post offices.
Internally and internationally, Bangladesh (formerly Eastern Pakistan) was no longer Pakistani. On December 19, 1971, just three days after Pakistan surrendered, the new Bangladesh government issued a circular to all former Pakistan post offices in Bangladesh to use their own initiative in making and using rubber stamps to impress all Pakistan postage stamps and postal stationary available at their disposal with a Bangladesh overprint. This postal transition from the name "Pakistan" to "Bangladesh" implemented the new government's general policy to strike out the word "Pakistan" from all printed papers, signboards and names wherever applicable and replace it with "Bangladesh." The postal authority realized that it was impractical to give instructions about specific or common design, type size of the rubber stamp, and color of prints to be used. The designs and colors of the rubber stamps varied considerably. The most common color was purple (violet), then black, with less in red or blue and a few in green. Not only did the new government's instructions required hand-stamping of the overprint, they also banned further machine pre-printing of overprints but permitted the continued use of those stamps already pre-printed until February 4, 1972.
Stamps with Bangladesh rubber-stamped overprints remained valid for use until April 27, 1974, with overprinted postal stationery valid until October 7, 1974. At the end of the validity period, the post office called in the rubber-stamps. It received 186 different ones, though a few had already been destroyed. Over the past 50 years since, evaluations of stamps and covers have found that over 200 different hand-stamping overprint devices had been in use throughout the country on a myriad of Pakistani stamps.
In the late 1970s, we purchased at auction the 1971-1974 Bangladesh provisional overprint stock of new issue dealer Fatoullah & Lazar, Inc., and put it away to later use to write a book on them. (We had just published an update of Tracey Woodward's study, "The Minted Ten Cash Coins of China".) However, our stamp and coin business got side-stepped going into the 1980s as the emphasis in the collector market shifted to baseball cards. In 1990, our card shop closed and everything including the stamps went into clean, dry storage (one 10x25 foot space and another one sized 10x15 foot).
We relocated these Bangladesh provisional stamps in storage. The box contained a little over 15,000 mint never hinged Bangladesh overprinted Pakistani stamps (definitives, pictorials, commemoratives, officials). Fatoullah & Lazar had sorted the stamps into the various lots of differing quantities to sell as new issues (from 100 up to 2,000 different). The largest lot Fatoullah & Lazar advertised in 1974 was a 2,000 different lot for ,400.00. Our box contained only one packet of 2,000 different and that became the core of the reference collection for the book we are now writing on these overprints. There also was only one packet of 1,000 different, which is the core of the collection being offered here. The remaining 12,000 or so stamps came sorted by the number of different in several glassine packets of 500 different, and numerous glassine envelopes of smaller different quantities.
When Fatoullah & Lazar's made its packets, its only concern was that each packet contained a specified quantity of different stamps, and not whether any packet contained the same or different stamps as another. Our concerns are different. To write a book, we needed to know each of the different overprint varieties and to what stamps each was applied. We had to check each packet of the remaining 12,000 stamps and compare each stamp with the core collections. Every non-duplicate stamp found was added to the appropriate collection without consideration as to its rarity. On comparison, the initial 1,000 stamp packet grew from 1,000 different varieties to over 1,600 different, with this collection including over 500 stamps that cannot be duplicated for another lot.
There are no price guides as to the value of the individual overprinted stamps, let alone a rarity guide for the numerous stamps in this collection of which only two exist. To price this collection of over 1,600 different stamps, we extensively searched the internet worldwide. We could not locate a collection as large as the one offered here, but did find a single collection of nearly 1,400 different, plus less than five collections totaling between 700 and 1,100 different stamps each. This collection is priced below these collections without consideration for rarity. There are also many single stamps and small lots being offered. We do know that in the long run, the rarities in this collection will have considerable value but the collector base is not yet ready for that and we are getting old.
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DOMESTIC SHIPPING
: We ship domestically (within the United States and to APO's and FPO's) by U.S. Postal Service with USPS Tracking by the close of the next postal business day from payment. Our shipping costs include full value insurance.
INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING
: We only ship with full value insurance. The post office no longer accepts "merchandise" for international Registered Mail services. Also, the value of this lot exceeds the maximum value of items that can now be sent internationally by Priority Mail (flat rate or otherwise). To be fully insured in the international mails, the only Postal Service option now is "Global Express Guaranteed," the cost of which is extremely high compared to the prior services that used to available through the post office. Further, with the global pandemic, "Global Express Guaranteed" service is being intermittently suspended on and off between various countries. That means that shipping times may be greatly extended. Though our practice is to mail by the close of the next postal business day from payment, in those instances where the post office is temporarily not accepting "Global Express Guaranteed" packages to your specific country, we will hold shipment and mail as soon as service is restored.
NOTICE
: Since insurance covers only the goods but not the costs of shipping them, the buyer agrees that once we have proof of delivery of the package to the post office, that if it is lost in the mails and not delivered or is damaged in shipping that the refund is limited to only the purchase price and any sales tax (if applicable) and does not include a refund of the shipping. For international buyers, we label our customs tags as "merchandise" and you are responsible for all customs, duties or other import fees into your country.
Copyright 2021 by Michael Fried, P.O. Box 27521, Oakland, California 94602-0521