Help Needed! What Are These?

Hello, this is my first post. I used to collect stamps when I was yound and aquired a modest collection. Whos knows if it's worth anything, probably not.

Anyway some years ago (probably about 15-18 years) my Mum bought a lot of stamp memorabillia from a local junk shop. Most if it consists of either glass plates printed in black and white with photos of stamps or copper plates etched with stamps.

My best guess is that they are postage stamp printing plates of some sort. They literally have every country and denomination of stamp you can think of, there are hundreds of them.

I have included a photo of one of the printing plates (sorry about the quality)

Does anyone know what they are and what they may have been used for? Any help would be great. Thank you.

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Interesting and I can say I don't know. It does look more like some type of rubber stamps instead of plates though. Is it metal or rubber / plastic?

Hmmm. Forgery?

The plates are def metal, I think probably copper. The one in the photo has a red tinge to it because I believe it may have been used to print using red/reddish ink.

I thought about forgery too but there are so many different types and ages, I believe I also have one that shows the british penny black or red (obviously colour can not be distinguished from the plate). They seem to be perfect engraving or etchings. I suspect if they were used to print with they could probably create an exact copy, if they are not indeed geniune. Who knows???

Anyone else have any ideas. The mystery continues. Thanks for the relplies by the way.

Tommorrow I will try to post some more pics if possible.

What are the dimensions of the plates? Are they the actual size of a stamp? If they were for forgery, wouldn't it have been more productive it make a printing plate of a sheet as opposed to one stamp at a time?

Oh and welcome to the club. Can't wait to see more.

I'm guessing that these are the illustration plates used for when a catalogue is printed. They remind me of the plates that were used at our local small-town paper when I was a kid for printing advertisements, back when type was set by hand. They could also be illustration plates used for printing albums, too.

I have posted extra pics of the stamps on the plate, glass and some on paper (glossy paper).

I think WpgLwr may be onto something. They could indeed be for catalogues or some sort of album. If this were the case shouldn't they have been destroyed after production, after all the pics in the catalogues are pretty much exact copies of the stamps in question and surely in the right hands could produce forgeries.

Anyway here are the extra pics for those that want to take a look. Do you think the items have any value to them?



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Image: PhotoStamp.jpg
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Oh! forgot to reply to stamperdude. Thanks for the welcome. The plates vary in size depending on the amount of stamp pics on them. The stamp sizes do seem to be 1:1 but this may not be the case for all of them.

Wow.. I don't have a clue but, I surely am intrigued. Maybe a trip to a local printer would help.

Hello Freddo.....

And welcome to the club.

I don't think these "plates" were used for catalogs........Anyone printing catalogs would have plates showing stamps from each country in order of issue.....not a mixture like these.