Nigeria SC#507-516 1986-1987 Unicef-Seashell Issues, 10 VFNH Singles, Click on Listing to See ALL Pictures, 2017 Scott Cat. $10.2 USD

10 VFNH singles from the 1986-1987 Unicef-Seashell Issues, 2017 Scott cat. $10.2.

Starting in 1975, all Nigerian stamp issues are watermarked with the word "Nigeria" that repeats in wavy lines. It appears that no attention whatsoever was paid to the orientation of the paper in the press, so that inverted watermarks appear to be just as common as upright ones. I have not seen any reversed watermarks or inverted and reversed watermarks. Sideways watermarks are common on the vertical format stamps, but I have not seen them on horizontal format stamps. Consequently I have not made any attempt to describe the orientation of the watermarks.

One aspect of the modern commemorative issues of Nigeria that is not apparent from the relatively low catalogue values is their scarcity. From the new issue bulletins I have seen, there are very few commemorative issues that were produced in quantities as high as 1 million. In fact between 50,000 and 100,000 of every stamp is the most common figure I recall seeing. For a country that has a population that is almost as large as the USA, that is not very many at all. This should be borne in mind when looking at the listings and the relatively low catalogue values.

Starting in 1986, and progressing into the mid 1990's many Nigerian Commemorative issues can be found both imperforate, and severely misperforated, as well has with jammed perforations, in which the perforator has struck the same area multipler times, destroying the perfortations. It is important to note that these are NOT damaged stamps, as this occurred during printing. The quantities of these errors is not known, but must be quite small, given that the total issue quantity for many of these issues is well below 100,000.