1. the blocks of 10 stamps sold over the counter
2. the 2 parts of a block sold in 2 presentation packs
It turned out that the text of the original tabs had been either flawed or had caused some preliminary discussion. Anyhow, it was decided to have a new version printed and use up the first one for the presentation packs that didn't need tabs!
The block sold over the counter - a printing of 1.300.000 blocks - can be seen in full:
But when you also have access to the presentation packs you will see rather big differences in most values. The distance between the last "d" of "Nederland" and the year "2002" is a bit greater that the width of the "d" itself:
Whereas in the complete blocks - 2nd printing - the "d" doesn't fit the space inbetween "Nederland" and "2002":
The presentation packs are said to have a printing of 40.000 blocks [in 2 parts].
All items have been available for some time and there had been no speculation on behalf of the collectors nor dealers after these facts had been published in "Filatelie" .
We are more than 6 years away from that event and still the Dutch Stamp Dealers Association hasn't found it appropiate to list these variations in their Specialist's Catalogue. As can be assumed no other catalogue has even heard of the variations in design of the Industrial Heritage stamps!
In the same year a German stamp was found to have a variation dealing with the position of the year 2002. It would have been unthinkable the German philately letting this go unnoticed! But that is Germany .... and we are in the Netherlands where it all takes another 50 years ....
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