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Tuesday, 29 September 2009

Security Machins - test version or missing colour?

This item was spotted on eBay recently, the 1st class gold with slits but no Royal Mail security overprint. With a postmark of 23 April 2009 it could have come from ordinary counter sheets (issued 17 February) or the early Business Sheets (issued 31 March).

The pair, which sold for £21 on 16 September, was described as:

The error is a completely missing iridescent overprint covering the whole stamp, this overprint is the Royal Mail in wavy lines which has been completely omitted from these stamps.



It's been suggested by somebody who has found some more, that these are "most likely from the DLR coil tests. There are some oddities but given the post mark date 23rd April 2009 they are from tests run by Royal Mail and have slipped through the system.".

Enquiries continue.
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7 comments:

  1. Anonymous29 September 2009 at 22:10

    thanks Ian for showing these. A nice find, and if these are the only two a nice price.

    I would like to see them examined by an expert, to determine the source, by expert someone like Douglas Myall comes to mind.

    Roy

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ian Billings1 December 2009 at 16:22

    no security overlay which have quite different heads suggesting that one is DLR and one WSP. I wasn't able to compare with my stock/collection to verify
    I've also been told that at least one 2nd class blue has been found with no overlay.

    If true this poses a much different question. Whilst the first two could be test pieces - both printers would need to test the security cuts without going to the expense of the die-cuts* - but it would not be necessary to trial the 2nd class as well.

    * When we were first told about the Security features at Stampex we were shown a WSP 1st class Business Sheet top panel with security slits but no security overprint. The slits were very like those actually used and quite unlike those in the publicity pictures. The sheet was dated 13/03/08, Number - 8905613. Regular sheets with this date are on sale so only part of the day's output was used for the security slit trials.

    Interesting, eh?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ian Billings1 December 2009 at 16:24

    OOPS. That addition lost its head. The start should read:

    We now know that the piece came from a larger one which had at least 16 stamps.

    I have now seen two off-paper 1st class golds with no security overlay.......

    ReplyDelete
  4. D Allwright10 December 2009 at 16:53

    The pair in question come from an original piece of 18. This was broken up into a couple of pairs and some singles. I found out about this and am now the proud owner of the remainer of the block of 10 on one pice.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous20 December 2009 at 12:33

    I just "soaked" of a copy, with succes! A copy found in 20 grms of kiloware bought on Ebay, so now we also have one in Denmark!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous24 May 2010 at 21:47

    And today I see that Sugar5000 is offering on eBay

    "NVI 1st coil strip with security tabs but no overlay!!" . So some lucky person has a whole 10,000 coil?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Ian - Norvic24 May 2010 at 21:56

    There was 'sort of' confirmation from Royal Mail that they tried the slits on coils before going the whole way with the security overlay. I think Royal Mail just decided to distribute them with all the other stock as there was no reason not to, especially as they weren't planning any philatelic release of the coils!

    ReplyDelete

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