World Scout Jubilee Jamboree, Sutton Coldfield

Great Britain issued three commemoratives on 1 August 1957, the opening day of the IX World Scout Jamboree at Sutton Park, Sutton Coldfield. The gathering was billed as the Jubilee Jamboree: fifty years since Baden-Powell's experimental camp on Brownsea Island and a hundred since his birth. Domfil catalogues the set as 957.1/3.

Each value carries the Queen's portrait beside a Scouting motif and the words JUBILEE JAMBOREE, and each went to a different artist. Mary Adshead drew the 2½d carmine-red, the Scout badge with a coiled rope; Patrick Keely the 4d navy blue, a medallion flanked by swallows; and W. H. Brown the 1s 3d green, a globe with compass rose and the World Scout fleur-de-lis. Harrison & Sons printed all three in photogravure, in panes of 120, on paper watermarked St Edward's Crown and E2R multiple.

The print runs show what each value was for: 137,235,286 of the 2½d, the inland letter rate, against 9,318,477 of the 4d and only 3,820,478 of the 1s 3d. SOSOW notes the set was also issued in coils perforated on all four sides.

These same three stamps were overprinted for the British postal agencies in the Gulf — Bahrain, Muscat and Qatar. Further references are Michel GB 299–301, Yvert GB 302–304, Stanley Gibbons GB 557–559 and Unificato 302/304. The three values are catalogued in rising face-value order.