Marginal Markings:

Suggested by our Primitive collector, Tony.
Gutter designs also treated in a thread called "gutter snipes"
LondonBus also posted something in the selvedge
of the GB Wilding series but I cannot find it.

Perf Guides:

Part halfpenny Aust Kangaroo Wallaroo sheet,
showing gutter lines and two "printers blocks"
(4 stamps in the corner with printers imprint)




Same piece, detail of perf guide holes:

Here are some interesting marginal markings !



Perforation Guide lines with pin holes horizontal; Guillotine guidelines; Colour code bars and stage blocks; The small quartered circle [top left] and the interesting little [compass point] thingy [left of Orange stamp] make up huge marginal interest.

More to come.

Londonbus1

Jind (alias Jhind alias Jeend) State in India believed in giving the collector his or her money's worth in the way of marginal markings, too



No need for perf guides, of course. Scissors were good enough for the good citizens of Jind.

The specialists lurve these sheets of the Jammu & Kashmir ½ Anna stamp. You can distinguish several printings from the number and positions of the nail heads (the white voids around coloured spots) in the margins of the sheets, as the printers bashed in more nails to hold the plate together.



This is an intermediate stage.

The printing plates of less used values, like this Official 4 Anna



required less attention. Screw 'em down once, and they stayed screwed down.

Very interesting stuff there, Gentlemen


I may have to challenge the pundit,
the pontificate of primitives here.

I believe Tony suggested "the wedge" shown on
the uglies was a means of guiding the perforator.
On US tamps the arrow was used for the Guillotine.

Rod, I rather think this is one of those cases of comparing great things to small. The requirements for postage stamps of the Bhopal Government being on a somewhat more modest scale than those of the US Post Office, the Bhopal sheets were printed from single plates. They had no need to guillotine them apart.

Bussahir (alias Bashahr, Bashar and half-a-dozen variations on that theme) also included a printer's imprint in its margins:



This one on SG 25 - the 1896 ½ Anna (I was not responsible for that helpful pencil note.)

Tony
I like this sheet. 1896, even with the stain it's a beauty. Daniel

Daniel, actually it isn't a stain. It's just a very poor impression of the ruler's monogram. Every stamp of Bussahir was supposed to be stamped with the monogram before the stamp was sold, in order to prove it was authentic. This is what the monogram should look like:



(This is the perforated version of the ¼ Anna stamp from the same 1896 issue.)

Slight correction:
The initials are those of Tika Raghunath Singh,
son of the then Raja, organiser and former
director of the State PO.

Quite right, Rodney. He wasn't yet Raja at the time.

Whew! grasshopper was hoping he was right.

(BTW I thought it was a stain too)

You know what is happening to grasshoppers in the Eastern states at the moment ...