Finnish stamp pane has five intentionally created varieties

Like the United States Postal Service, Finland’s Itella Posti Oy has issued a limited edition of a stamp pane with intentionally created varieties.

Also, like the Postal Service’s upright variety of the $2 Jenny Invert pane, the Finnish pane will be sold to customers in random order. However, the limited edition Finnish stamp was produced in a much larger quantity — 3,000 — compared to only 100 of the upright variety of the $2 Jenny Invert pane.

Finland’s pane honors the Dudesons, a four-man stunt group with their own film and television series in Finland, the United States and other countries.

On Sept. 1, Itella Posti Oy issued the pane of four nondenominated first-class self-adhesive stamps showing cartoon versions of the four Dudesons as schoolchildren: Jukka Hilden, Jarno “Jarppi” Leppala, Jarno Laasala and Hannu-Pekka “HP” Parviainen. The print quantity was 303,000.

On Sept. 22, the announcement was made that 3,000 of the 303,000 panes contained five intentionally created varieties.

In this announcement, Itella Posti Oy product manager Tommi Kantola said that as many as five “pranks” were added on the special edition.

The announcement also described the design differences: “The special edition miniature pane includes, for instance, Jarppi’s right hand thumb in the stamp, which is missing in real life. Other errors can be found in the pane’s test number, time of day, the letter s and the color of the book covers.”

All of the stamp panes include messages on the reverse that relate to ananti-bullying campaign and a hidden CEE App (Chameleon Explorer) code that links to online content with a smart phone or tablet.

Janne Korsumaki designed the Dudesons pane in collaboration with Rabbit Merchandising Oy.

The address of Itella’s online postage shop is www.posti.fi/goshopping.

The address of Finland’s bureau is Itella Corp., Philatelic Center, Box 6, 00011 Itella, Finland.

Its new-issue agency in the United States is Nordica, Box 284, Old Bethpage, NY 11804.