A pair of 15h stamps from printing plate VII on one cover — Humpolec, 3 August 1919
A rare addition to the 15 h record is a cover addressed to Miss Anička Dvořáková, "t. č. u Junka" (then staying at the Junek household), in Čakovice near Pelhřimov, cancelled HUMPOLEC on 3 August 1919. The franking consists of two 15 h brick red, imperforate stamps — and both come from the seventh printing plate (plate VII), the rarest of all seven plates of this value.
A curious detail: the sender affixed both stamps to the back of the envelope — on the flap — rather than to its front, address side, as was usual.
Franking and tariff
The two 15 h stamps together make 30 h. The date, 3 August 1919, falls within tariff period II (15 May 1919 – 14 March 1920), during which an ordinary letter up to 20 g cost 25 h, plus 5 h for every further 20 g. The 30 h franking matches exactly a letter in the next weight bracket (up to 40 g) — so this is not a random doubling of the stamp, but the correct payment for a heavier letter.
Printing plate VII — the rarest of the series
The seventh printing plate of the 15 h is by far the least documented: the site's records include only 122 attributed copies, covering 70 of the plate's hundred fields (even the best-represented fields have only around four copies). Attribution for this plate rests on manual comparison by the collector against the catalogued distinguishing marks: the two copies documented here correspond to field 9 and field 19 of plate VII.
An interesting side note: plate VII is also remarkably uniform in type — the overwhelming majority of the copies recorded so far (98 of 100 assessed fields) belong to spiral type IIs and crossbar type Ip, the same combination as both stamps on this cover; other type combinations occur on this plate only in isolated cases (fields 13 and 93).
Two different fields from such a sparsely documented plate, together on a single cover and with a full date of use, make this piece one of the more significant additions to the 15 h record.