The Assassins Guild Three Pence, otherwise known as the Thrup’ny Resurrection. This essentially the same stamp as the Postage Paid, but with that text replaced by Three Pence, following up Sir Terry’s vision of the stamp. They were still printed in sheets of 28, and these were available to collectors. The sheet margins have minimal decoration, although part of the BP-AB-CE logo is the word GUM. This may have been a gentle reminder to the Emporium because of what happened initially. The Ungummed Thrup’ny occurred on the first batch of sheets when the incorrect paper was used. It is said that 1500 such stamps were produced and those that went to collectors were found in LBEs. If my theory is correct, there would be two slightly different sheets of these stamps; one with, and one without the GUM wording. Those without though may have all been split up and no intact examples exist. Or was the GUM bit always there? Placed as a reminder that these were destined to become Skullbacks, but never happened. The Postage Paid stamp sheets are unlikely to have had the logo.

Some sheets are missing the Vetinari symbol representing multiple
print runs occur following sheet make-up changes

Sheets have copyright logo differences. Some sheets have them positioned by the bottom left (and top right stamps) while others have then on the side of all four corner stamps. While most have the BP-CE-AB lettering in white some sheets have it in purple. This alone suggests three different print runs, and indeed you can find three shade differences. Some stamps are a touch redder, and others paler.

The Zombie Thrup’ny stamp was the other error when a very few received the zombie skull and cross bones and yellow dots print on the gummed side. Only a couple have been identified in collections, but was this an error or not? It would be easy to claim that the wrong stamp was used, as the Postage Paid and Three Pence have the same design effectively. But did these two issues overlap? Why were Zombies being produced when the Three Pence stamp was in circulation? It could be that this adornment was added to a sample stamp sheet of Three Pences. Whatever, there would have been 28 done on all, equating to one sheet, and all but a few were rounded up. A couple of lucky collectors got a very nice item.

At some point and for some reason sheets appeared with one inverted stamp in column 8, row 3. The stamps are otherwise unchanged, by this does provide the opportunity for tête-bêche pairs of stamps. This alone could be why. Imperforate gummed sheets of this and the regular sheets can be found in collections.