I believe the backing paper used by Walsall may be thinner - certainly than that used five years ago by De La Rue. The die-cutting may be deeper, or it may be the same. But the effect is to make separation of the stamps on some sheets quite difficult, as this picture shows:
I bought this sheet of 10p stamps and immediately noticed that one stamp was coming clear of the sheet, because the die-cuts around the perforations had gone right through the backing paper. (I've put a piece of booklet cover through the gap.)
As I couldn't sell the date block with this fault, I started to split the sheet to store in the stockbook and - even though I had double folded the sheet along the rouletting - it separated down the perforations as shown at the right. I'll use these for postage, as they can't be sold either.
The first sheet I noticed this on was the 100g Special Delivery, which is an expensive sheet to mess up! Fortunately I was able to use some of the unsaleable stamps on international tracked orders, so those customers had a bonus of a my using a brand new high value stamp on their postage.
So the word is, take care!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for reading the blog and commenting: please use an identity (name or pseudonym) rather than being Anonymous; it helps us to know which 'anonymous' comments are from the same person to avoid confusion. Comments are moderated to avoid spam, but will be published as soon as possible.