Illustrated below is the 4 Pence stamp issued for the state of Victoria in 1860. The stamp was part of a set, all with the same design with values of 3 Pence, 4 Pence and 6 Pence. The stamp was printed in Australia on paper made in Britain. The set was issued on three varieties of paper, the first issue with no watermark, the second ( made by T.H. Saunders of London) with the value of the stamp in words, The third by De La Rue with the watermark as a numeral corresponding to the value of the stamp. The stamp illustrated below is printed on the T.H. Saunders paper with the value in words as the watermark. The watermark is illustrated below the illustration of the stamp face.
Hi, I have a stamp identical, with "'2"" inverted watermark.Could you tell me please if any rare or not? thank you very much.
ReplyDeleteHi just_me...sorry I haven't replied earlier but haven't checked the blog for a little while....the stamp you possess may be "scarce" (inverted watermarks are generally scarcer and considered as having higher value than normal)...however your stamp can't be identical to this one (or if it is would be a watermark error and scarcer still)...one issue of these stamps were watermarked to correspond with the money value of the stamp, that is, a fourpenny stamp was watermarked with a "4" and no twopenny stamp was made for this issue. The De La Rue printing of this stamp was issued with a numeral watermark but the only value printed was a fourpenny stamp. If your stamp is" identical" to this one with an inverted "2" watermark it may be a rare stamp...check it again very carefully, "similar" and "identical" will make a lot of difference to its value....if it is identical take it to a stamp dealer and have them look at it.......cheers andrewh
DeleteThanks for the reply.I looked more closely, and my stamp watermark "" 2 "" reversed not inverted.That is turned to the right.
ReplyDeleteHowever I wish u Merry Christmas and a happy new year.
Hi Andrew,
ReplyDeleteI know little of stamps, not having collected them since I was at school in the '60s, but I am very interested in the papermaker T H Saunders. I am used to seeing accounts of fragments of a THS watermark in stamps, but with a figure how can you tell it is THS paper? While THS seems to have told banknotes overseas on a turnkey basis I don't know if he ever did it for stamps and it is my impression [no pun intended] that where fragments of his watermark appear it because the printer ran out of the correct palin or watermarked paper and used the THS paper to complete the run. It would be logical to assume that the correct paper was also made by THS and that the make-good paper thus matched it in colour, surface, and substance.
Cheers, Colin
Hi Colin...haven't been back to the blog for a while, doing other things, and see your comment was posted some time ago. The information re : the paper maker comes from the Stanley Gibbon Stamp Catalogue and I would hope that they have done their research with regard to the paper used. Since the stamp was printed and issued three times in Victoria Australia. I assume that paper was ordered here and used to print the stamp with some record of where each paper type was sourced for each printing....cheers andrew
DeleteThanks very much for that Andrew, I shall continue my research into THS, 40 years and counting so far!
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