Oddball sheet from Israel

I'm always wary when I write about a novelty from another country's postal administration in case Royal Mail think it's a good idea and decide to do something similar.  Nonetheless I thought I would share this with you in case your interests range beyond just British stamps and you ever come across this.

A customer in Israel sent news of a novelty sheet of four stamps and 12 labels that was issued by the Israel Post Office in the spring of 2020.

My correspondent writes:
The nominal value of the stamp (16 shekels*) is the highest-valued stamp ever issued in Israel. The reasoning behind the choice of this value is unfathomable. It doesn't match any postal tariff and, if at all, will only be used in making up the postage on heavy parcels to the United States.  [* £3.53 - not a very high value in global terms.]


As explained on the information sheet supplied (click on them for larger images), the sheet

"contains four stamps on the bottom row and three rows of labels (which are not postage stamps), represents the products of each of the printing plates and the intermediate products obtained as each colour is added on top of the last. 

The top row shows the product of each plate separately inorder to demonstrate the process, but in reality only the black label exists first.  Each of the following rows shows the result after adding the second and third colours (cyan and magenta) and the row of stamps shows the result after the last colour (yellow) is added."

  

 

As a demonstration of the effects of the lithography printing process, this is interesting but nothing many of us haven't already seen with 'progressive proofs' being produced by Format International in the 1980s.  Although not expensive relative to the output of Royal Mail, Jersey, Guernsey, Gibraltar, Australia etc, it isn't exactly a necessary stamp issue.

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