Monaco
Colour Proofs of the 1968
Mexico City Olympics Commemorative Issue
Colour proofs for Monaco's 1968 Mexico City Olympics Commemorative Issue.
On April 29, 1968 Monaco issued a set of six regular issue and one airmail stamp to commemorate the 19th Olympic Games being held in Mexico City from October 12th to 27th. The multicoloured stamps depicted shot put (20c), high jump (30c), ring gymnastics (60c), water polo (70c), wrestling (1fr), high bar gymnastics (2fr30) and field hockey (3fr airmail). Although it does not list imperforate varieties of these stamps, the Scott catalogue does note "Many Monaco stamps from 1940 to 1999 exist imperforate. Officially 20 sheets, ranging from 25 to 100 subjects, were left imperforate." There is no reference to mono-colour varieties of this issue but it is likely that these are "colour trials" made available to collectors as limited edition issues.
Of additional interest are the marginal inscriptions on several of these stamps. The colour trials were printed by the French postage stamp printing department and therefore have inscriptions similar to those on French stamps. In this case they read T.D.3-13 and T.D.3-15. This is the printing press identification where T.D. means Taille douce, an Intaglio printing press that handles engraved stamps. The number 3 indicates that this press can print three colours at a time. Finally, the last number is the sequential press number within this category, 13 being the thirteenth 3 colour taille-douce printing press operated by the department. The significance of the pencil notations is unknown.
Regular perforated multi-colour issue
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