Baden-Powell centenary — Olympic overprints (2¢)

This is the 2 centavo half of the Dominican Republic's Baden-Powell centenary overprints, issued at Ciudad Trujillo on 9 September 1957. The same eight diamond-shaped stamps of the 1956 Melbourne Olympics — each showing a gold medallist beside their national flag — were overprinted in red-orange with the centenary emblem, here with a 2 centavo surtax. Domfil catalogues the eight as 957.30/37.

The athletes in rising face value are Lars Hall of Sweden, Betty Cuthbert of Australia, Egil Danielsen of Norway, Alain Mimoun of France, Norman Read of New Zealand, Robert Morrow of the United States, Chris Brasher of Great Britain and Adhemar Ferreira da Silva of Brazil; the last three are airmail values. The overprint was engraved and applied to the base stamps Scott 479–483 and C100–102, perforation 14.

SOSOW records only 25,000 of each value, which makes this the scarcer of the two centenary overprints by a wide margin. Its companion, surcharged 5 centavos and numbered Michel 601–608, appeared the same day; Scott separates the two by adding a letter to the numbers of that set. SOSOW attributes the two souvenir sheets to this issue, but the stamps printed within them carry the 5 centavo surcharge, and Domfil numbers the sheets separately as 957.46 and 957.47 — so they belong with the 5 centavo series.

Catalogue references are Scott DO B6–B10 and CB4–CB6, Michel DO 593–600, Yvert DO 462–466 and PA111–PA113, and Stanley Gibbons DO 699–706. All eight are in the collection.