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In Febuary, 1953, to give favored treatment to
the soliders, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunication issued
a set of "Military Post" stamps. The values in set
were 3, the face values were all 800 old RMB, the design was
"August 1st"------the emblem of the People's Liberation
Army. Under the emblem, it printed "Military Post ",
"Chinese People's Posts", "800 Yuan". The
shading of the first design was orange-red, it was refered to
as "Yellow Military Post" ; the second design was
purple, it was refered to as "Purple Military Post";
the third one was blue, it was refered to as "Blue Military
Post" . The size was 21mm * 32mm, the perforation was 14,
the sheet composition was 90 (9 *10); the printing process was
offset. The printer was Beijing People's Printing House. The
issue had been scheduled as on August 1,1953. The stamps had
been printed since early July,1953. They were the first military
post stamps of China since 1949. Having been printed out, the
stamps were distributed to the armies and military offices,
each officer and ordinary solider were given two stamps per
month for postage. Some armies commented that without code-named
post boxes, the use of military post stamps could cause leak
of secrets and the range and users of the stamps could not be
controlled and so on. Therefore, the authorities decided to
"postpone the implementation", and prohibited the
using. Later, all the undistributed stamps were ordered to be
destroyed. The stamps at the officers' and soliders' hands still
could be used. These three kinds of stamps were in private collections,
among which the blue "Military Post" stamps came out
at a later date, so they were less and became very rare and
valuable.
During an auction in 1994, a blue "Military
Post" stamp was sold at 800,000 RMB. This was a record
high in the history of stamps in China since 1949. |