Australia 2d Used Stamp With Perfin Punched On Behind.help

Hi,I am a new member over here and nice to meet everyone in this forum.I have just discovered an Australia 1938 2d used stamp from my dad collection and the G NSW perfin holes were punched on reverse side or this perfin holes were in reverse position when you view it in front of this stamp,G NSW was from state government of australia by that time.I have seen many of this G NSW perfin holes rotated to left or right at 90 degree and even inverted position,all of them were punched exactly in front but not on the reverse side just like this.Unfortunely,I really have no idea if this perfin holes punched on reverse side is normal or not.So,I need help from the expert to tell me if this is normal or not,your help is very much apprieicated.Please check it out on the scans below and let me know what you think.Once again,thank you.

Welcome Pandaman,
I stress this is only my opinion, my examples come in all ways imaginable,
I would suggest your type occurs when the sheets are folded and punctured
double thickness or more.
You will need to confirm this with evidence from the Aust Perfins manual.
I would suggest your example is not that uncommon.

Hi rod222.Unfortunely,I am not able to confirm it from the Aust Perfins manual because I cannot find it on the internet and not sure what is the webside address.If it is really available,please inform me and I would like to have a look.One more thing is are you sure that this kind of thing happend is not rare?In my opinion,I would think something like this is certainly very rare and unusual because this is the first time I have ever seen thing like this as a stamp collector for so many years and probably many people over here see thing like this for the first time too.

I have a pair of Scott Aussie #141 with the same reversed "Government of N.S.W."or G NSW on it,I do believe these are common and I also believed they used many different stamps with this perfin.

Pandaman, I have often seen the Australian Perfin Manual
for auction, IIRC it sells for around $30. (Aust official Perfins)
Ace stamp auctions in Perth would be able to advise you
if you Google them, Ian is a very helpful guy, and has an
auction coming up soon, or you could buy a brand new copy
from here
http://www.ozrevenues.com/Clubs/per...stralia.html

I stressed that was my opinion, and remains so,
I certainly could be wrong, I am flesh and blood.
Good luck in your search, please let us know your results

"Canadian Stamps with Perforated Initials" has photos of some of the common perforating machines of the day. Here's one of the machines used to apply perfins to stamps.



This machine was wide enough that it could perforate a full sheet of stamps, one row at a time. Depending on how many pins were in the perfin design, it could perforate a stack of up to 4 sheets. More pins meant fewer sheets at the same time.

A relevant quote from the book - "A sheet of stamps can be fed into the machine in eight possible different ways: any of the four sides of a sheet with the stamp design face up and any of the four sides of a sheet with the gummed side up. So it is possible to find a perforation in any of eight different Positions." If the machine operator liked to look at the stamps as he perforated them, then his perfins would be oriented differently than somebody who liked to look at the gum. There's no inherent rarity in the orientation because there was no demand that the stamp be perforated in any particular orientation. For Canadian perfin collectors, a stamp is less valuable if the perfin design cuts into the perforations used to separate the stamps - carelessly operating the perforator often created stamps that are less valuable for a collector.

Sometimes the operator would just fold a sheet in order to perforate more stamps at the same time. This meant you could get right-side-up and upside-down stamps on the same sheet - pairs like this aren't too common. It's also possible to not pay enough attention and run the same stamps through the machine twice, or three times, or whatever. Of course, this is often forged and I have a specialized catalogue to help determine genuine Canadian OHMS perfins.

Ryan

Nice article Ryan
I was reading a reply from you some years ago
re perfins, and Douglas Mayall, author of the Machin Handbook replied,


A common cause of different orientations of the same pattern is
folding the sheet several times before punching out the pattern. In
such a case no orientation is likely to occur much more frequently
that any other. It could also lead to patterns being altered by broken and therefore missing pins.

Douglas

Welcome to the group Pandaman

Perfins have gained a lot of respect in the philatelic community in the past 40+ years.

The G / NSW (Government / New South Wales) is a relatively common perfin but always good to collect and there are specialists out there who try to get them in all of the conditions possible,

For the Canadian official perfins with O.H.M.S., there are 8 possible ways to get them. There would be that perfin punched correctly on the face so that it reads correctly, then the sideways, upsidedown versions occur and then the same is found for those that were punched from the back and read backwards and again in the other positions for sideways, upsidedown etc.

The same can be said for the G/NSW and all of the other Australian type of perfins.

One can truly spend a lifetime just collecting the different patterns of perfins. When you stop to think of it, there are about 35,000 (or more) 'known' patterns for Great Britain alone and that is considered to be only half of what is out there and then Germany comes into play with almost the same amount.(This includes official as well as private company perfins). So, that should give you an idea what is out there in the perfins field.

Cheers

Bujutsu

For those interested, there is a very nice Perfin site by Toke Norby :

http://www.norbyhus.dk/perfpage.html