Problems - and price rises - caused by pre-printed albums.

I can understand the appeal of pre-printed one-country albums with pictures of all the stamps, and mounts to hold the unmounted mint stamps.  But I've never really liked the idea since I won a Sweden album in a Swedish Post Office competition, and found that there were pages for all the complete booklets as well as all the single stamps and pairs from those booklets.

That meant I had two buy two booklets to be 'complete'.  But I only collected used, so there was little chance of getting a complete booklet unless I bought it cancelled-to-order from their philatelic bureau.

A complete run of stamps in a pre-printed album looks really good, and the pre-installed mounts do save a great deal of time - but at quite a cost.  For some countries the pages for extra years cost more than the stamps they will hold.  And the range of the collection is dictated by the album publisher, sometimes also a catalogue publisher.

If the album has spaces for booklet panes as well as the single stamps, then you need two copies.  To avoid being caught out you have to develop the skill to guess what the publisher will and will not include, because the new year pages are often published in late spring, which will be after some of its contents have gone off-sale at the philatelic bureau.

I was reminded of this by two recent tips in the US Linn's Stamp News, in a column which alerts readers to fast-moving stamps.  More often highlighting moves in US stamps the last two issues have mentioned the UK's 2009 Charles Darwin and 2010 Classic Album Covers issues, specifically the stamps with conventional gum from, the prestige stamp books.  Because the 'over-the-counter' stamps were self-adhesive in both cases, the ones with 'water-activated' gum warrant separate catalogue listings, not just as complete booklets but as individual stamps and panes.

In Stanley Gibbons' Concise catalogue for 2011 (published after the Album Covers had been taken off sale) these 10 are priced at a massive £24 - just 15 months after they were issued with an original face value of £3.90.  Similarly the 2009 Darwin set (face value £3.43) is listed at £26 mint and used.

With increasing face values and number of issues, dealers are not holding large stocks of recent issues, and this - coupled with increased demand from owners of the latest album supplement - leads to increased prices.  So be alert: anticipate what will be in the supplement while the stamps are still available.  There are some that you just won't be able to get cheaper than original face value!  You won't find them in discount postage boxes.

Constant flaw on Darwin's Machin PSB pane

An eagle-eyed collector in Singapore has spotted something that two dealers handling his stamps failed to spot, and that is a constant flaw on one stamp on this pane.

It might have been a fleck of paper, except that it appeared on all the panes in my stockbook. And it might have been on every Machin pane - except that it isn't any of the panes I have with the dark 5p stamp, and it isn't on any of the panes in the books I have, or the FDCs. But it is constant on at least 20 panes!

More next week when I will have had a chance to scan it.

Darwin PSB Machins - now two types!!

Back in mid-January I reported (here-link) that the Machin definitives in the Darwin PSB were quite different to those printed in ordinary counter sheets, the 5p being especially dark. Discussing this with collecting friends we concluded that there was too much ink used - or that too little had been wiped from the cylinder during printing. This view was reinforced by the fact that some of the panes showed flecks of dark-brown ink on the reverse of the 5p stamps where panes had stuck together. This was not because of water-moisture, which would normally have caused the paper surface of the lower stamp pane to be damaged, but because the ink was not sufficiently dry, and thus only the surplus ink is slightly offset on the lower pane.

My data came from the unbound panes that we were sent for use on covers. However, in a second delivery of unbound panes the stamps are much more 'normal', as you can see in the picture - the newer pane is at the top, and you can clearly see the phosphor bands on the 5p, whereas the lower pane is darker and slightly blotchy. The 10p and 48p stamps are also different, but less obviously. Interestingly the dark green patterned background to the pane is lighter on the original than on the version received later, being almost totally lacking in definition on the upper image. All these were distributed by the Royal Mail's Philatelic Bureau.


The actual books that we received here (also from the Bureau) contained stamps of the second type, leading several collectors to assume that the early part of the printing - partly used for dealer distrubutions of unbound panes - was over-inked and that this was soon corrected (partly to replace dealers' damaged panes), the lighter printing being used for binding into the actual booklets.

However, a purchase from a local post office has revealed that the over-inked panes also exist in bound booklets. So were there two printings? Let us know which 'printing' is in the books you have!

Darwin Seeing Double in PSB

It was probably inevitable that there would be make-up errors in the Charles Darwin PSB as this seems to be a matter of course, even from 'security' printers. So in an initial distribution from Royal Mail's Philatelic Bureau in Edinburgh, one lucky collector has a PSB with a duplicated MS pane.
This is on our website and updates will be added in due course.

Darwin PSB Machins very different to others

As with the Design Classics Prestige Stamp Book(PSB) Machins pane, the Charles Darwin PSB has some surprises, especially as the PSB stamps are printed by De La Rue as the ordinary counter sheets are. I don't think we've had a 5p - or indeed any Machin - quite this colour before!
The Machins from the Darwin PSB are printed by De La Rue in litho and are shown on the right.(The normal sheet stamps in gravure are on the left).

Remember these are simultaneous scans: if the 'old' stamps don't look like yours, make some allowances for your monitor and my scanner! The new ones are still different.