Pictorial Specimens No stop after Specimen

[Mark Houston]

Hi,
Iam a keen Tasmania Specimen collector and over the years have collected all the Pictorial values apart from the 1d with no stop after specimen.
Does anyone have any info on the number of this variety per sheet. There is also a slightly less difficult variety with a clearly broken Captal "C" in SPECIMEN
Any help or an offer on a 1d would be great.
Mark Houston

[david(fi)]

I am a relatively new collector of Tasmanian Pictorial stamps. Amongst my early purchases was a De La Rue specimen set which included a strip of four 4d. To my surprise it is illustrated in Tinsley's book on page 182 with the missing full stop on the right hand stamp. The 5d I bought had a top selvedge and this also was without the full stop (also the 6d was without the full stop but not marginal.) A surprising number.
I spoke to David Parsons at the Spink stand at Stampex in London this week and he states that the Specimen stamps were almost invariably issued to UPU in strips of six. One stamp in six is my suggestion although only a count of surviving examples will confirm this.
Malcolm (David fi)