While it is common for a postal service to order print-runs as stocks are diminished by the public, it is also the usual practice to only use a given design for a small period of time so as to discourage forgery, and then to destroy the printing plates.
In a few cases, the postal authorities have produced official reproductions, copies of an existing design created on new plates.
A notable example of this occurred in 1875 in the United States, where all stamps issued to date were reproduced or reprinted with the intention of making them more readily available to collectors.
[2] Unofficial or illegitimate reprints also exist, being produced by private printers who were contracted to print stamps, but retained the plates for their own use.
The classic example is the Seebeck reprints of Latin American stamps produced in great numbers around the end of the 19th century.