Security Backing Paper - let's end the confusion

Whenever something new occurs, finders, dealers, and catalogue editors inevitably find their own initial ways to describe the change, or to number new stamps leading to some confusion among collectors.  This can lead to errors in orders, something we all want to avoid, if customers are using terms that we do not use everyday and in our own lists.

When I first alerted collectors to the second type of Security Backing Paper, containing some inverted text, I had initially suggested that

...with new printing the paper could be re-rolled as it 'would always be the right way up'. 

But of course I was wrong, as I explained in February 2017. With text both large (L) and small (S) and upright (U) and inverted (I), the field was wide open for ways to describe it, and of course he who goes first doesn't always have the final say.

I suggested that one type would be

SU - LU - SI - LI

and what I described as the inverted type would be

SI - LU - SU - LI

 

And that stuck until others decided that there could be other ways.

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Stanley Gibbons
In his Gibbons Stamp Monthly Machin Watch column John Deering uses an abbreviated form

sL or Ls

So sL equates to our Upright, and Ls is the equivalent of our Inverted.  The chart in the Concise catalogue also shows the upright and inverted versions of SBP1 (PB-up and PB-inv).

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Modern British Philatelic Circle
The MBPC has adopted a different approach, with this description:

When, anywhere within the design, the line ROYAL MAIL etc. (in large upright letters) is followed by the line ROYAL MAIL (in small upright letters), the design is upright (designated SBP2u).When, anywhere within the design, the line ROYAL MAIL (in large upright letters) is followed by ROYAL MAIL (in small inverted letters), the design isinverted (designated SBP2i).

Or to put it another way: on SBP2, they've put the Large before the small, and decided that is Upright (SBP2u), the total opposite of my original suggestion and that used by Stanley Gibbons' catalogues.

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So there you have the designations most commonly used.  This is why collectors using one or other of these designations when writing to dealers present them with a problem.  Undoubtedly the SG Concise version ought to be most widely used.  However for that degree of specialisation, the members of the MBPC are most likely to want both, and they will use the Circle's system, which is unfortunate as the membership numbers far less than the huge number of Machin collectors worldwide.

Hopefully the information provided will help collectors and dealers to interact with each other without less confusion.

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