needed, with each plate resulting in variations or errors in the overprinting. 8-cent surcharge In December 1904 the Canal Zone postal authorities requested from Panama a supply of 8¢ stamps for to be employed as registration fee stamps. Panama at the time did not have an 8¢ denomination in its current series of postage, making it necessary to prepare an 8¢ surcharge stamp to existing stocks of postage stamps. To this end Panama used their regular 50¢ stamp from their current series of issues. The 8¢ surcharge was made in Panama on Colombian stamps already overprinted with a red colored bar and the word PANAMA and occurs in varying thickness and forms. There are three varieties of the '8' in the surcharge. 1906–1909 issues Postage stamps issued in 1906–1907 were printed by the Hamilton Bank Note Engraving and Printing Co, in New York; Those issued in 1909 were issued by the American Bank Note Company. This series of stamps features portraits of statesmen, educators and other prominent men involved in Panama's early history. There were ten designs in all. Some of the issues were printed with the portrait inverted. The 1909 overprints were printed at the Isthmian Canal Commission’s Printing Office in Panama City. The overprinting in the first printing places the word CANAL near the left side of the stamp, reading upward. Successive printings were issued with CANAL at the right, reading downward. Some of the issues have missing or partially missing overprints, doubled overprints and inverted overprinting. A specialized catalog is needed to determine which values have the various oveprinting errors. A second series of stamps was issued in 1909, honoring the same figures depicted above in the 1906 issues, with same color themes for a given stamp, but with different border designs. 1915 and 1917 pictorial issues A set of four pictorial stamps were issued by the Canal Zone authorities on March 1, 1915 to commemorate the opening of the Panama Canal. These series of stamps were very different from any of the previous issues in both shape and design. The designs consists of a black picture (a vignette) in the center framed by a colored border design. A second series of three pictorial commemorative stamps were issued in January 1917. On November 27, 1916, Executive Secretary McIlvaine wrote to Panama's Secretary of Foreign Affairs Narciso Garay, informing him that the official name of the cut had