5p yellow-olive. Or am I seeing things?

Just spotted these in a stockbook someone sent me. 5p yellow-olive? I don't remember that. In fact I have no record of it in my lists either. Two phosphor bands. Similar print to the 5p lake shown  and colour very similar to the 6p. Have I missed something? Am I going slightly mad?

No obvious signs elsewhere on the strip of discoloration by acid or something, although that has to be my first thought as to what has produced these. A print of the 5p in the 6p colour would be extraordinary.

Prestige confusion and more Spring flowers than you may think

After all the effort I made to try and figure out who International Security Printers were it seems that the Loco prestige booklet was printed by Enschedé. Now, they may also be part of the magic ISP group but until I know more please accept my apologies for any rubbing out you now have to do in your records. So these are all new - four Regional pictorials and the 2p and 5p. You'll recall that the 5p Enschedé in the Merchant Navy book had ellipses near the top. And the last 2p was Cartor.

Another new find - no not a dark blue or black 2nd, that's just my scanner misbehaving and I'll replace the picture when I next use it - is a 2nd blue code M12L MRIL from Walsall. This came only in the coil issues used by big firms. Rare mint but you may encounter some used copies in used mail. 

A new set of Post And Gos is here. Using the same quite bland style of image but the subject matter does cheer in contrast, you need to look out for three different versions already! The first will be the usual strip sent out by the Philatelic Bureau, never to be seen again once installed in an album or box. They have font style 3 as before.

Then you need the nice new font style 4 shown above. These are from new Hytech machines - well, new software in old machines - and have a much more attractive and well-positioned text element.

Lastly, the usual Wincor mchine is printing them with font style 2, annoyingly still misaligned but at least easily identifiable!

Ships, a Morris Minor van and two new Machins

This week sees the Merchant Navy prestige book and a new 6 1st book of the 4 Machins +2 special issue type. The special issues stamps are interesting in that the prestige book has an Enschede pane with the Royal Mail Ship stamps gummed but the small book has a Walsall self-adhesive version.

There is also a nice pane of four stamps in greyscale which I think are just illustrating the Merchant Navy (the others being part of Post Office transport). The four Merchant Navy stamps have no text at all, just the 1st denomination. As I write this, I cannot quickly recall another issue, other than definitives, that have had no descriptive text but that is more likely to be down to poor memory than an indication of anything significant.

I shall give that more thought before I am inundated with comments highglighting something terribly obvious.

Anyway, that's about as much attention as I have ever paid to special issues - on to the Machins. The 5p is new in several respects. Its gummed with security features. OK, so far, similar to Dr Who and Football book panes - except this is Enschede, not Cartor and Dr Who was M12L anyway. But there is another difference too - for the first time I have noticed, the ellipses in the perforation are near the top, not the bottom.

The 5p also looks a duller, more grey shade. The 50p is the first gummed version in the slate colour. So lots of new entries for this pane.

The small book is as expected - M13L MPIL codes and what I assume must be type 2a slits. We've seen these before.

 

More 13 codes appearing and some scarce printings

New M13L + S code for 1st red 2B from Walsall booklets of 6

New M13L + B code for Walsall 2nd blue CB from business sheets

New M13L + T code for Walsall 2nd blue CB from books of 12

This Jubilee 1st grey-blue 2B Walsall with short bands at bottom and inset left band is very scarce and cost £15.

Even more scarce are the 5p ash pink 2B Cartor and 20p bright green 2B Cartor with inset left bands. £25 each! They come from the Dr Who pane and are quite distinct from the normal pane stamps

Dr Who and a few more Machin discoveries

So here are the four Walsall litho printed (despite what Royal Mail say about gravure, according to B Alan) Machins from the Dr Who prestige book. As I said in my last post, the 87p value does seem unfortunate but then the chances of anyone ever getting a genuinely used one of these was pretty remote anyway! 

 

The 1st Tardis has made a number of appearances: as part of the prestige book pane of Machins, where it appears gummed, in the prestige book version of the miniature sheet with four aliens, in the miniature sheet issued separately , in a booklet of 4 with two featuring Doctors and in a Smiler sheet attached to labels of various aliens over the years. All these others are self-adhesive. The Smiler sheet version is illustrated above, although I am sure all will be slightly different.

The MA13 codes are appearing now and have been seen on 2nd Class Walsall from Books of 12 so bearing a T code too. There have also been the new 1st red with a 13 code - more about them when I get them.

It will be interesting to see how scarce some codes will be. I suppose a value printed or reprinted just before a rate change would be a candidate as there will just be the single run of that one. Stocks running low near the end of a year in which a not particularly popular stamp hasn't been reprinted (e.g a MA11 code still in use at the end of 2012 and  having to be reprinted in December 2012) and a small run is made.

A 1st Large Diamond Jubilee 2B, inset left band. This cost £17.50 so I'm hoping it proves scarce!

Another expensive addition - A 1st Diamond Jubilee "B with bright fluor and iridescence short at the bottom. £9.00.

Another 1st Diamond Jubilee from the Classic Locomotives / Machin book of 6 with iridescence short at the top. £5.00

Still MA12 but code T from a book of 12 showing short phosphor bands at the bottom. £11.00.

Wide blue band on London Underground 1st commemoratives. £8.50.

Re distribution!

I have sung the praises of B Alan Ltd. before and it was a pleasure to re-enrol on their distribution service. They talk about Machins in my language - losing me sometimes on some delicate detail about some printing but for the most part explaining where new items come from and most I would have missed. I am also pleased to have the account number H111 which is particularly appropriate!

The first distribution arrived a little while ago and, as well as duplicating Royal Mail's standard bits and pieces had some interesting additions.

First up is the Christmas 1st class that is issued to staff as a 'thank you' for their extra work over the period. This year some will have received sheets with the matrix still present and without rouletting on the reverse. Not Machin, I know, but I am coming to the view that the small Christmas issues are definitive and will be adding them to my catalogue as B Alan have done.

They make a distinction between Post and Gos and Post and Gos with overprints, making the reasonable point that the overprints effectively turn these into 'commemoratives'. I am happy to go along with that and may well stop bothering with even the declared low number of overprints to be authorised. Another change to my catalogue in a category I'd only just created!

The Machin Post and Gos are also now coming with the new font, making another six to acquire if you are collecting each denomination.

The Christmas issue, using the Robin is from an earlier Birds issue but reprinted so it is a separate collectable item for Post and Gos, in particular as it has the new type 3a font with the left alignment and stronger face. This has the BPMA overprint. I need one without that.

Birds III Worldwide 40g (scarce)

1st Robin with different font spacing and alignment?

Robin with blank denomination

There have also been found some Birds 1 Post and Gos with the Worldwide 40g denomination - offices believed to have had an old roll left over when by all rights they should have been used up well before the new rate was introduced! These are very scarce and, at £215 for the set of six designs, not a cheap item.

For Machin proper definitives there is, of course, the following - look for the different codes if you'd thought several were all the same!

DLR with date code 12:

1p maroon 2B

2p dark green 2B

5p ash pink 2B

10p light tan 2B

20p light green 2B

50p slate grey 2B

£1 wood brown 2B

DLR NVIs

1st Large red 2B

1st red 2B

Enschede NVI

Enschede

1st red 2B code R and 12

Walsall

1st red 2B code C and 12

1st red 2B code T and 12

1st red 2B code S and 12

1st Large red 2B code F and 12

1st Large red 2B code B and 12 with short bands at bottom

1st red 2B code B and 12

Specialist items

A 19p Harrison in deep yellowish-olive CB has been found in strips of 5 from a coil. That means an extra space being required in 1993 issues!

DLR 87p orange 2B code 12 with short phosphor bands at the bottom

This is from a 30/3/13 printing and scarce.

Wal 1st red 2B code 12+C with short iridescent overprint at top

Wal 1st red 2B code 12+C with inset right phosphor band

Regional

Lastly, like me, they include the pictorial regionals as definitives and we have:

England 1st lion 2B with a grey head, not silver, printed by Cartor

Wales 2nd leek CB by Cartor

Coil strips

Enschede 1st red 2B + inkjet number

coil strip of the Harrison 19p deep yellowish olive

Quite a lot to sort through and, by now, there should be variations of many appearing with date code 13! Just in case you had thought of settling down for a while!