GBLA – Errors on Stamps by Captain Benda
Peter Valdner (2026)
On this blog, we commemorated the 50th anniversary of the GBLA stamps by Captain Benda and the background of their creation. Without a doubt, they are among the best stamps of the Great Bitter Lake Association. So that you don’t have to click for that article, I am repeating the covers from it here. Of course, you can also find the same images in the GBLA Encyclopaedia and Catalogue.
While Captain Kudrna printed his GBLA stamps using a Hectograph multiplicator, Captain Benda printed them from matrices. The problem was that to print multicolored stamps, he needed several matrices that had to fit together. And they had to be assembled in mirror image.
To avoid applying multiple colors onto such a composite, in 1972 he printed each color separately. First the black base, then the flag, and finally the political symbols—the Star of David for Israel and the crescent for Egypt.
These political symbols are miniature, so it’s no wonder that he occasionally printed them with errors.
When he printed another stamp in 1974, he used the UN symbol. These stamps were apparently printed in multiple colors at once, so all of them were printed correctly. But it was probably a fiddly process, so he produced far fewer stamps.
For the Farewell Issue, he therefore returned to the original method and printed the individual parts step by step.
And the same thing happened as two years earlier—sometimes the symbols were printed the wrong way.
In regular stamp production, printing errors occur only rarely and are therefore valued more highly in catalogs, often by orders of magnitude. When writing the GBLA catalogue, I therefore faced a dilemma: how to objectively evaluate stamps produced in only dozens to hundreds of copies, where some printing errors with missing elements exist in only a single example.
I resolved this in a pragmatic way. I rated the printing errors higher, but not by orders of magnitude. And I did not assign separate values to stamps with missing print, as that would have led to extreme averages.
While writing the catalogue, I saw many collections containing GBLA stamps and covers. Several collectors own some of Captain Benda’s stamps or covers, mostly from 1972. But I did not find a complete set of stamps—let alone covers—in anyone’s collection.
They can therefore serve as a measure of how advanced a GBLA collection is. Already having four stamps means the collector has an advanced GBLA collection. Five covers indicate a well-off collector. Six or all seven stamps or covers mean the collector has a top-tier GBLA collection. Stamps—and especially covers—with missing print would be a highlight even for an stamp exhibit.
Among my GBLA offers, you can find four stamps and a rare set of five covers by Captain Benda. Similar to those, presented in the book and shown in this article.
Where does your GBLA collection rank in this assessment?
