The Sports

These early Merchants Guild stamps were essentially the first Discworld stamps to have planned sports. There had been earlier sports, but the first year Tower of Arts sports illustrated a passage from Going Postal, while the $5 Brass Bridge sport occured by accident. Most likely because of this the one sport per sheet is positioned in a bottom corner so the sports could be identified easily when the sheets were split. Only later would an internal position be used so that sheet selvedge did not have to be removed from every stamp to prevent the sport being easily spotted by collectors from the selvedge patterns.

 

 

The small ship in the coat of arms is reversed on the sport and is sailing westwards.

 

common and sport

The ‘p’ after the 1¼ is missing

 

common and sport

The space between THREE and PENCE was omitted.

common and sport

Very hard to spot, the ‘O’ in HALF DOLLAR is replaced by a ‘U’.

 

common and sport

 

Not a sport, but an alternative stamp design. It only appears on the imperforate stamp on special prize proof sheets. The coachman’s is wearing a top hat.

 

common and sport

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One unusual background fact behind the 1¼p, 3p and 50p sports was that extra examples of these were printed on a special sports only sheet. The aim was provide a higher ratio of LBEs containing sports. These three values were printed in sheets of 49, which at least by 2015 standards would provide a low number of sports and make it difficult for collectors. So 60 stamp (20 of each value) sports only sheets were printed. This is the best image that I have of such a sheet. Around the edge on the selvedge NOT FOR PUBLIC CONSUMPTION is repeated in red, lest someone in the shop hadn’t realised. The numbers required of these sheets is unknown, nor is how much the LBE sports ratio was improved. However, I reckon that to improve the sport ration to 1:10 LBEs only one Sports Only sheet would have been required for about every 30 standard sheets broken up.

This does raise the question of the numbers of ½p sports. Those were printed in sheets of 70. Were a few ¼p sports only sheets printed (I have never seen or heard of one), or are these about twice as rare as the other value sports?