The 1¢ Chicago Century of Progress Stamp of 1933

Fort Dearborn

Number 728
Number 766a
Number 730a

The perforated stamp, Number 728, is easily distinguished from the imperforate stamp cut from the souvenir sheets. This design was issued as a Farley reprint only as a souvenir sheet, Number 766. It is impossible to distinguish the Farley Special Printing from the regularly issued souvenir sheet, Number 730, by examining individual souvenir sheets, unless the sheet has a margin of 13mm. That is, the distance between the stamps must be 13mm, as shown in the 766a gutter pair above. This pair can only be from the Farley special printing since a pair with this much spacing between stamps can not be made from the originally issued souvenir sheets.

The Farley printing was issued as a full sheet of 225 stamps, with 9 panes of 25 stamps separated by 13 mm gutters. The stamp is often collected as a pane of 25 stamps to retain the marginal markings of the originally issued souvenir sheet, as shown below. Single stamps, or anything less than the full sheet for that matter, are given the suffix "a", that is either 730a or 766a. In the illustrated example below, it can not be determined if the sheet is the original printing or the Farley Special Printing since there is no 13 mm wide margin present. Therefore, the following sheet must be assumed to be the ordinary printing, Number 730.

Number 730 Souvenir Sheet