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Rare Phonecards
Tunisia: Urmet phonecards |
  elephone cards had been introduced in Tunisia far in 1983: they were optical cards manufactured by Swiss company Landis & Gyr (picture on First Issues section) and they remained in use for several years. Then, in 1994, Italian firm Urmet offered their telephone system with magstripe cards. On that occasion, 2 cards were produced with a mintage of 5,000 each, one showing a street view, the other one advertising Telecom services.
But a translation mistake was made on both cards, and the cards were printed with the word TELEFONIQUE instead of TELEPHONIQUE. All cards were soon withdrawn and officially destroyed, but a small number of them (about 300)  |   | | Above left, the backs of the wrong cards: just 300 survived their destruction. At right, the correct ones, which were reprinted. |
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had been used for internal trials and survived destruction. Needless to say, these cards are now quite rare and valued and only a few of them reached collectors market.
The cards were reprinted, the subjects and mintage were the same, but this time the wordings were correct!
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