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Sachin Tendulkar can’t stop breaking records even in retirement.
The print order
for the two stamps on the Little Master’s 200th and last Test is
reportedly the highest in terms of monetary value for a commemorative
stamp release in India’s postal history.
The two stamps of
Rs 20 denomination that were released at the Wankhede Stadium on
November 14 have a print order of 30.1 lakh each, amounting to Rs 12.04
crore.
The 24.1 lakh
miniature sheets, 16.1 lakh sheetlets and 6 lakh each of first-day
covers and brochures account for another Rs 61.76 crore, raising the
total value of the print order to Rs 73.8 crore.
“Sachin Tendulkar
is such a personality and his 200th Test was such an event that not just
philatelists, but even other people would be able to relate to it. We
anticipate international demand too. That is why we are printing the
stamps in sizeable quantity. A smaller print order would have also
pushed up prices of the products in the secondary market, which we
wanted to avoid,” T.S. Sinha, deputy director-general (philately) of
India Post, told Metro.
Average print orders of stamps since the late ’90s have ranged between four and eight lakh.
The phone started
ringing at the philatelic bureau of the Calcutta GPO as soon as the
stamp release was telecast live from the Wankhede. “We controlled sales
till we got more stocks to avoid people returning empty-handed,” said an
official of the philatelic bureau.
Average daily
sales last week in Mumbai, which received the first bulk supply, has
been Rs 3.5 lakh, an official said. Delhi ran out of stock in two days.
A 1957 stamp on
the 19th International Red Cross Conference in Delhi had a print run of
4.5 crore, a milestone even in those times. But with each stamp priced
at 15p, the total monetary value was Rs 67.5 lakh.
Stamps with
international appeal still get more-than-average print orders. The Taj
Mahal stamp issued in 2004, for instance, had a print run of 40 lakh.
But it was a single stamp priced Rs 15 and only one lakh miniature
sheets were printed. There were no sheetlets. The volume of first-day
covers, whatever it might have been, could hardly have pushed up the
total value higher than Rs 12.15 crore, less than a sixth of the total
value of the Sachin stamps.
A set of 12
wild-flower stamps issued in 2013 and priced Rs 5 each came out in three
miniature sheets of four stamps each, carrying a print run of 8.1 lakh
for each sheet. India Post also printed 8.1 lakh sheetlets of 12 stamps
each. Even if the value of the 1.2 lakh first-day covers and brochures
were added up, the aggregate wouldn’t exceed Rs 9.84 crore.
“What has pushed
up the value of the Sachin stamps is the high denomination, coupled with
the extraordinarily large order for miniature sheets, sheetlets and
first-day covers,” said Kalyan Negal, a former secretary of the Indian
Philatelic Traders’ Association.
The release that runs the Sachin stamps closest in terms of total monetary value is on films.
In May 2013, India
Post had brought out a 50-stamp set commemorating 100 years of Indian
cinema, each priced Rs 5 and featuring doyens of the industry such as
Raichand Boral, Durga Khote, Tapan Sinha, R.D. Burman, Rajesh Khanna,
Dev Anand, Salil Chowdhury, Bhupen Hazarika and Yash Chopra.
The release was in
six miniature sheets — two carrying nine stamps and four carrying eight
each. Every sheet had a print order of 8.1 lakh. The print run for
first-day covers and brochures was 80,000 each and the total value
worked out to Rs 20.318 crore, far short of the Sachin commemorative
issue that would come months later.
At 40 years, six
months and 21 days on the first day of his last Test, Sachin became the
youngest Indian — and eighth overall — to have a stamp in his name
printed in his lifetime. He is also the first cricketer to be featured
on an Indian stamp in his lifetime.
Mother Teresa was
70 when a stamp on her was released on August 27, 1980. Before Sachin,
five cricketers in India were featured on stamps – K.S. Ranjitsinhji in
1973 and C.K. Nayudu, Vinoo Mankad, D.B. Deodhar and Vijay Merchant in
1996.
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