Show Your Unusual Perfs Here

CHOMP!



I don't really know what has happened here...

A closer look at the 1929 UPU 1d scarlet which has been chomped by something.

Send it to me for closer inspection

It is an interesting curio isn't it?

It certainly is. The gauge is different as well. Odd

I haven't tried to measure the gauge of the perforations on this Bhopal reprint



but I'd guess they're around 3 or 4.

This Jammu & Kashmir sheet



may look (relatively) normal, but in fact it's an example of something rather unusual in the world of perforating: a harrow perf. The Jammu & Kashmir printers constructed a device, looking rather like the proverbial bed of nails, to perforate an entire sheet at one strike. It was not a success, and was retired almost immediately. The printers then went back to issuing scissors to the post offices instead.

Good thing there is said to be no such thing as a dumb question,(Just dumb people who ask questions), since I have one.
What's with the bite taken out of the newer Machins? (and now other stamps)
One is clearly visible above the I of Singapore. I heard somewhere that it is a security issue, but I don't see that it secures the stamp any better or prevents any sort of mischief.

My limited understanding of these elliptical perforations is that they are one of a suite of security measures adopted in order to make postal forgeries more difficult to produce.

I could be completely wrong of course.

A good question butterfly.

Not stamps, but a couple of unusual perfs on Cinderellas...

Salvation Army ... looks like someone didn't gauge the perf machine properly:



US Treasury Department ... notice the variation in size between the distinctly different perfs in the vertical and horizontal positions:

Check out Question #8 in this Machin Quiz for your answer ... you might find the overall Quiz to be fun as well, although somewhat off topic for this thread:

http://www.gbstamps.com/machins/quiz2.html

Fascinating. thanks. Should be interesting to see if the elliptical perfs actually stop the forgers.

Not surprising, I rated...

"Beginner, Machins are not yet your cup of tea. "

An interesting link there wt1. A wealth of information.

I'm afraid there's another beginner here as well Rod!

Although I don't have any personally held perforation oddities, I'll share what Canada has been doing in the past years.

I've included Unitrade's close-ups of the two stamp issues with different perf sizes.

Canada has issued stamps with an additional single perforation such as a "Maple Leaf", such as the attached SC 2123b Souvenir Sheet Big Cats: Joint issue with China.



Canada has also issued stamps with transitional perfs (having two different perforation sizes on the same horizontal or vertical line). One example is SC 2369 Black History Month.





This latter version could also be the result of two or more different stamps with different perfs appearing on the same Souvenir Sheet and touching each other - such as Art Canada SC 2068, which has three different perfs on the centre stamp.