(Editor: a question from reader Y.W.:) Hi , I am a little confused about the catalog value of the 2 printings of the above mentioned s/s. First printing, misspelled the country as El Salvadol, the second printing has the corrected country name as El Salvador. Scott listed the first printing has a higher catalog value than the second printing. However, the Korea catalog is opposite to that. Please advise! Thanks in advance!
The sheets from in the question are these two sheets:
Here are the two sheets in more detail showing the exact position of the mistake versus the corrected name:
The reason for this error is very understandable if you know how hangul works: the hangul letter ㄹ (named “lil”) is usually pronounced as an L, but in certain situations becomes an R sound. If you really want to know exactly why, then this sentence explains it all: “The consonants ㄹ and ㅎ also experience weakening. The liquid ㄹ, when in an intervocalic position, will be weakened to a [r]. For example, the final ㄹ in the word 말 ([mal], ‘word’) changes when followed by the subject marker 이 (ㅇ being a sonorant consonant), and changes to a [r] to become [mari].” 알아…?!
And just for good measure, here is the stamp for which these sheets were released to begin with:
Please leave your ideas with regards to this question below in the comments.
I’ve kept records of selling prices of various Korean items on Ebay for the past 10 years. The SALAVDOL sheet is definitely the cheaper one. Prices have been in the range of $2.50 to $3.60. For the SALVADOR sheet, prices have ranged from $11.50 to $21.50. The Scott Catalog clearly has it backwards.
Thank you!
No, I don’t agree.
This is a really good question, I hadn’t paid any attention to the disparity in the prices before this. They should be the same, as Scott states there were 30,000 S/S printed of both issues. Interestingly, some catalogs agree with Scott and others with the KPSC on the differences of the prices. So, I have sent a question to my contact at Scott as shown below and will update this reply if I can get an answer:
“An observant member of the KSS asked us a question about the Korea 1970 El Salvador error S/S which prompted me to take a look at this issue. I had not thought about it before.
He asked “why does Scott have the error with the “L” listed for more than the 2nd correct printing, while the Korean Postage Stamp Catalogue have it in reverse pricing”? And checking other catalogs I found Michel agrees with Scott and Stanley Gibbons has it as the KPSC, so all the main catalogs are inconsistent with the pricing.
When I look on eBay and Delcampe, I find that indeed, there are more of “Salvador” S/S available for sale than the “Salvadol” S/S. However, the prices of the two that are on sale, are not much different. Scott says that there were 30,000 of both the 1st and 2nd printing, so I wonder why there would be much price difference?
In any case, the note under this issue reads that the “Value, 2nd printing $7.50,unused or used”, I believe this price is too low. The lowest price I saw on the websites was $25 going all the way up to $100. So I believe that note about the 2nd printing should be much higher. And since this is such a different printing, even the size of the letters, I wonder why Scott does not give this a number of 728b?”
As my idea, 1st edition (L) is much more valuable than 2nd edition (R) because 1st edition (L) is more rare.
Why is it rarer when 30,000 S/S’s were printed of both the 1st and 2nd edition? You can easily find both types on eBay and Delcampe and the asking price is about the same for both the 1st and 2nd edition. Robert