door A very popular and interesting Dutch stamp emission is Queen Wilhelmina with the fur coat. The first stamp in the new design appeared in 1898, the ‘Kroningsgulden‘ (the coronation guilder). The emission continued in 1899 and later years.
The 5c and 10c stamps were the most widely used and regularly reprinted. So too in 1923.
They were printed, but due to a strike at the Joh. Enschedé en Zonen printing works in Haarlem, the stamps could not be finished. As post offices were in need of the stamps, they were issued to the offices without perforation.
This then created an officially issued un-perforated issue. The post offices were naturally surprised by this, because since the first issue of 1852, all stamps issued had been perforated.
A number of post offices then thought of making something of a perforation or piercing themselves, although this was against the rules. In the end, very few post-perforated stamps were used and the number remaining is small.
The ‘Handbook Postwaarden Nederland‘ describes the phenomenon in detail and the table shown here is taken from it.
Zutphen, pictured here on a letter piece, is mentioned in the table only known to have been used on 29 January 1923.
The one pictured here was used on 27 February. It will be auctioned at René Hillesum Filatelie in Zwijndrecht on 23 September.
It is worth mentioning, that the stamp has an emergency ‘perforation’ on only two sides (left and bottom).
