Flyspecks on Postal Cards

Flyspecks. This is a deceptively popular area in the collection of postal cards. Some of the scarcest postal card varieties fall into this category. Flyspeck collecting might be considered a sub-specialty of full sheet position-plating. Very few of our early postal card issues have been fully plated - this really takes some dedication and lots of time!!

Nowadays, it's probably no longer possible to separately identify specific individual plate positions, since many of the offset-printed anomalies are not constant. For most of the issues prior to the 1970's it is possible to identify specific flaws or damage in many postal card issues which remained constant for enough time to allow examples to survive for all of us to enjoy.

The question of whether or not to catalog-list flyspecks is a difficult one. Many of us like them, and love to see lots of items in our collections formally listed in the catalog with high valuations! On the other hand, there are so many of these that listing these becomes more than somewhat impractical. At one time, the listing rule was a constant flaw which significantly affected the vignette portion of the design. There are, however, many examples of cards having significant damage to other areas of the overall card design.