Hello Everyone.....
Trying to work in the dark to get pictures turned out to be less than ideal so please excuse the quality of some of these pictures.
Taggants can be mixed in during the paper making process or applied before or after printing.
There are two types of ultra-violet lights used in stamp collecting, long wave & short wave. If you remember the black lights used in the 1960's, you are already familiar with the long wave effects. For our purposes small handheld lights are readily available on-line and affordable....about $35.00 for both lamps with bulbs. Top one is long wave, bottom short, lamps are about 6" long.
This is one page from my ultra-violet study......very common 20 & 22cent stamps from the "flag over" series, sheet, coil and booklet stamps with a variety of taggants.
With both lights on....Some taggants mixed in during the paper making process create what is known as "hi-bright paper" and can easily be recognised here. Some stamps are issued with both hi-bright paper and applied taggants.
comparison with just the short wave light.....bottom two here are the brightest two in the second row from the bottom, in the photo above........hi-bright paper shines through the applied taggant.
In these photos you can see that the taggant is applied in different size squares/rectangles and it is applied evenly although in some cases the application is thinner, and you can see that the space between the taggant squares can vary depending on the size of the squares.
Here you can see what is referred to as "grainy taggant" with a horizontal shift/freak. This stamp also has hi-bright paper.
Another interesting freak.
Most newer stamps have a taggant so that it can be "seen" by the electric-eye canceling machines used throughout the US and many other countries.
Posted 03/01/2008 2:49 pm
