Quirky large U.S. 2024 Flag coil plate number coil strips

Philatelic Foreword by Jay Bigalke

Sometimes things aren’t neat and tidy when adding new issues to a collection. This year’s United States Flag stamps are definitely not cut and dry as to how Scott catalog editors might list them.

The Flag stamps have four designs and were issued June 14 in four formats printed by two printers, Ashton Potter and Banknote Corporation of America. Both printers produced booklet panes of 20 and coils of 100, and in addition Ashton Potter produced coils of 3,000 and 10,000.

The Scott catalog numbers for these stamps will appear in the August Scott Stamp Monthly. In the meantime, I wanted to share with readers a quirky detail on the coils.

For the coils of 100, Scott catalog editors are listing plate number coil strips of five and strips of nine, with the plate number on the center stamp.

For the stamps from coils of 3,000 and 10,000, editors are only listing a strip of nine, also with the plate number on the center stamp, because a strip of five containing all four stamps is not possible. The printer on the coils of 3,000 and 10,000 used an odd interval of every 27th stamp for the plate number, so a design is skipped right after the plate number stamp. Which doesn’t allow for the possibility of a strip of five with each design and a plate number stamp as with the coils of 100.

Oh well. But now collectors can safely trim their coil stamps knowing what the Scott catalog editors are planning in the listings.

And one last tip, the booklet pane stamps for both printers are almost identical except for the size of the design. The one design is marginally larger than the other, but enough that each will receive a separate catalog listing.

I hope these timely tips are helpful to our Linn’s Stamp News readers.

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