KARACHI, May 31: On May 21, the Pakistan Post issued two commemorative postage stamps of Rs8 denomination celebrating Pakistan's 60-year diplomatic ties with China. One stamp showed President Asif Ali Zardari shaking hands with the president of China and the other had Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani shaking hands with his Chinese counterpart.

Mistakenly the printed stamps had an inverted watermark because of which their issuance was withdrawn a couple of days after their release — they were also supposed to be shipped to China.

By that time 250,000 se-tenants had already been printed.

Speaking to Dawn , acting manager of the Philatelic Bureau Arshad Kafeel said: “The commemorative stamps are now going through a reprint process and will be again available in the market soon, perhaps in a few days.”

The multicolour stamps, designed by Adil Salahuddin, are 50.5X35.00mm in size using 100GSM W/M Dual Purpose paper.

Stamp collector Mohammad Ali Jahangir said: “There are two kinds of stamps: commemorative and definitive.

The former is brought out on special occasions and in a limited quantity, whereas the latter is made for general purpose and can be used for years.

Commemorative stamps are not reprinted; if they are then the Universal Postal Union must be informed about it or a complaint is lodged with it. Watermark paper is usually used in definitive stamps to minimise the risk of faking because they are sent to remote or rural areas as well. Commemoratives don't need watermarks because they're generally bought by collectors, so they are by and large printed without the watermark.

“Now we come to the Pakistan-China stamps. I don't think there was any need for having the watermark. Then the ones that did get printed had inverted watermark, which again wasn't that worrisome an issue, because once the whole quantity is printed, it doesn't remain a big issue. I think there's some other reason for the withdrawal of the postage stamps that we don't know.

“I can't put my finger on it. You see, the practice is that the material that they pull back is set on fire. Therefore those who have the inverted watermark stamps, since it was in the market for a day or two, might find that their value has increased a fair bit in the future. Also bear in mind that China has the largest number of stamp collectors (1,000,000) in the world, followed by Germany and India.”

In the last three and a half years, the Pakistan Post has come out with more than 30 commemorative postage stamps. Five were issued in 2008, 14 in 2009 and 10 in 2010.

This year four have already been printed, commemorating the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, population census, Pakistan Railways and Pakistan-China diplomatic relations.