XIX. The 1973 Overprints

Currency: Iraqi dinar (1,000 fils = 1 dinar)
Production: Government Press, Baghdad(?)

Group I: postage stamps overprinted with bars
First issued: 29 January 1973

Group II: service stamps overprinted with bars
First issued: 29 January 1973

Group III: postage stamps overprinted with bars, overprinted with dingbat, “Official”, and smaller “رسمي”
First issued: unknown (date or dates between 29 January and 25 March 1973?)

Group IV: postage stamps overprinted with bars, overprinted with dingbat, “Official”, and larger “رسمي”
First issued: unknown (date or dates between 29 January and 25 March 1973?)

Group V: postage stamps overprinted with dingbat, “Official”, and smaller “رسمي”
First issued: unknown (date or dates between 29 January and 25 March 1973?)

Group VI: postage stamps overprinted with dingbat, “Official”, and larger “رسمي”
First issued: unknown (date or dates between 29 January and 25 March 1973?)

Group VII: service stamps overprinted with dingbat
First issued: unknown (date or dates between 8 October and 20 November 1973?)

Preamble.

One point I think immediately should be clarified. I generally don’t scan my service stamps, simply because I lack the time and enthusiasm to do so. Where a series was given service overprints, I scan one or two and note the fact on the relevant page. For this series, however, seeing as the bulk of the stamps are service stamps, I’ve scanned the entire set.

The history, 1958-1973.

To gallop through this at some speed. General Qasim lasted until 1963, when he was overthrown and murdered in a coup led by his erstwhile deputy General Arif. The new government was an uneasy marriage between military types and Ba’athists. The army proceeded to violently suppress the Ba’athists later in 1963. Arif died in a helicopter accident in 1966 and was replaced by his brother, also called General Arif, who was overthrown in another coup in 1968, which brought the Ba’athists back to power. At the time these stamps were issued the president was General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, a Ba’athist.

Nationalisations and the use of service stamps.

By 1973, official covers are much more common than they had previously been. In July 1964 the government nationalised all banks and insurance companies, as well as thirty large private companies of the “commanding heights” type. The Iraq Petroleum Company was nationalised in June 1972. All of these newly nationalised entities seem to have used service stamps (or at least, have been entitled to use them) and probably the main reason for official covers becoming more common is that, simply, the number of entities entitled to use official stamps had greatly increased. The banks, in particular, must’ve made an enormous contribution to the total volume of official postage. The universities also, at some unclear point, seem to have also started using service stamps.

The “Qasim Emblem” definitives were overprinted for service in 1961 and 1962, and no doubt these lasted a long long while. There was then a lull until sometime in 1971-72, when various stamps from 1967 to the present were given service overprints. The next service stamps were these ones here.

The stamps.

I wrote a couple thousand, unpublished, words on these in early 2018, which, on my review of them now (a little over four years later), reveal themselves to be entirely insane, and I haven’t used a single one of them on the page I’ve now written.

Anyway these are a fairly obscure subject, on which I can say little with any confidence. Evidently, in 1973, the postal service encountered (for whatever reason) a shortage of new stamps, which forced it to dip into its stock of Hashemite-era remainders and bring them back into use. There were fewer new designs issued in 1973-75 compared to earlier and later years, but they were still steadily appearing, including an entirely new definitive issue (printed in East Germany) which appeared in June 1973. So the system seems not to have completely gotten stuck, at least. A new service issue (for the first time, a wholly new design instead of an overprint) appeared in late 1975.

Most of the stamps which were revived and overprinted were service stamps, or were turned into service stamps via the overprinting. I suspect that this was done to preserve stocks of postage stamps, seeing as all Iraqi service stamps up to this point had been produced by overprinting postage stamps. In view of the usefulness of stamps as propaganda, presumably it was felt that normal civilian users were a higher priority than the government and state-adjacent entities for receiving stamps with the appropriate iconography.

What prompted this shortage is unknown to me. My vague and distant understanding of the history doesn’t suggest the government was having any revenue issues of the sort which would have prevented it from paying foreign printers. On the other hand, Iraq was, at this point, getting its stamps printed in many different countries at once, and so there wasn’t a single “point of failure” at the printer side which could have disrupted supplies (e.g. De La Rue getting bombed in 1941, or what have you). The Yom Kippur War didn’t start until 6 October, by which time I think all of these stamps would have been issued or, at least, in production.

I think, at any rate, a genuine shortage there must have been. Even with the royal head thoroughly obliterated, putting these out on sale simply as a thrifty stock clearance would have been unnecessarily delicate, and —perhaps more to the point— would’ve been a less certain source of funds than just selling the stamps, with or without overprint, to dealers as entire sheets. These stamps, as they appeared, can occasionally be found on the market in large blocks or entire sheets, but there’s no sense at all that any of them were diverted to the dealer trade. This seems to have been an entirely sincere issue, whatever exactly prompted it.

The stamps — technical aspects.

Organisation. I’m following Gibbons entirely — the “Group” numbers are my own, for a bit of extra clarity.

The nature of the overprints. These were done in Iraq, somewhere — I don’t know if the venerable Government Press was still in operation or if the works were done elsewhere. Evidently the printing plate for the 1958 “Iraqi Republic” overprint had gone missing. The three-bar design evokes the similar device used in Egypt to obliterate the portrait of King Farouk after the revolution there. The rectangular item is presumably just a meaningless printer’s ornament. It was also used, in 1973, to turn some postage stamps into tax stamps (with other text and devices).

Varieties. Gibbons lists a few pricey minor numbers, which probably ought to be major numbers, but I don’t have these and don’t care to get them. The dingbat can be found pointing both ways (examples of both can be seen here) and, exceptionally, on the 1948 official 12 fils of Group VII a dingbat of different design can be encountered. I don’t have one to show unfortunately.

Issue dates. The uncertain ones are me assuming that Gibbons has the internal chronology of 1973’s stamps correct. It may not.

Other reappearances.

1941 officials. Official covers from this period can, exceptionally, be found franked with stamps of the 1941-47 pictorial series. I find these sufficiently intriguing that I’ve devoted a separate page to them here.

1949 airmails. The 1949 airmail stamps also make an occasional appearance. I probably haven’t quite paid this as much attention as I ought to. I don’t think these stamps were ever demonetised — although dating from the Hashemite era, their lack of royal iconography presumably made them not unacceptable in the republican context. They appear quite frequently on covers of the late 1950s and early 1960s. I’ve neglected the later 1960s, so I can’t say if they continued, sporadically, in use all the way through to the early-mid 1970s. Either they did this, or they had faded away by this period, and their reappearance was due to remainders being located and placed back in use. For further research.

1958 “Iraqi Republic” overprints. I’ve never seen a stamp with the 1958 “Iraqi Republic” overprint on a cover from this period. They seem to have disappeared entirely by circa 1960 or so — whether they were ever formally demonetised, or stocks simply ran out, I don’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a formal demonetisation at the end of 1960. Ay any rate I think it’s certain that, if remainders had been found in 1973, they would have been put back in use, and so their failure to reappear means that no such stocks were available.

This point prompts the question of why the postal service was still holding Faisal II portrait stamps in 1973 — i.e., why they had neglected to overprint some of these stamps in 1958. The best conjecture is probably just that they were overlooked in the chaos of the revolution and the need to get the overprints done in a hurry. The most interesting examples are the 1958 postage 15 fils, and 1958 official 30 fils, both of which must have been in Iraq at the time of the revolution (discussed in more detail here), but they avoided being overprinted in 1958, although they would go on to be overprinted in 1973.

The 1971 sale of remainders. It’s worth noting here that in October 1971 a quantity of remainders was put on the market. Gibbons says this was done by the postal authority itself and, indeed, the quantity circulating in trade suggests this was an official act and not a disgruntled employee smuggling out a few sheets. This is where the complete sets of the 1958 portrait definitives, including the unissued values, come from. I note —and this is purely conjecture— that 1941 pictorial officials can be found in large blocks and full sheets rather more commonly than any other stamps of the Hashemite period, and I wonder if these are also products of the 1971 sale. The reissue of some of these stamps in 1973 suggests that stocks had survived their period of currency in the 1940s, anyway.

Evidently, at any rate, the sale of remainders wasn’t to the extent that it exhausted stocks completely.

The 1959 “Qasim emblem” definitives. These were, evidently, printed in enormous quantity, and can be seen in use right through to the early 1980s. I don’t think there was ever a period where these were not in use (i.e., I don’t think they ever needed to be “reissued”) but I haven’t paid much attention to this point.

23 June 2022