King George V Sideface Varieties

Not forgetting that in the marginal area had letters as well. Maker Name maybe?

As per langtounlad's illustration on page 2 of the cited thread, the watermark on each pane has either POSTAGE or COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA outside the marginal line's vertical side. The is no text down the inter-pane gutter.

Just to help (or confuse) this thread, here is a Roo showing the marginal lines on both the top and right. (It is inverted, but you get the idea.)

Thanks guys, I now have a good understanding of the vertical line in the watermark, and the letters alongside some of the lines. I guess they were never collectable because
a. There were too many different ones
b. There is no attractive way to display them.
c. Watermarks are too hard to read with certainty.
On the other hand they would have been useful to a dedicated specialist trying to locate the position of every stamp and its flaws.
Testing you out. This is 1½ Brown KGV. It's the best copy I can make. Can anyone actually tell its position?

Sorted through a lot of mixed messy KGV lots from 2000 to around 2014. Check large numbers of KGV's for watermarks.

Marginal lines or lettering in KGV's were not that common, even hard to find. The marginal letters and lines are a treasured part of my collection.

Boreraig,
It looks like there might be a 'W' from COMMONWEALTH in your watermark but there is a better chance of confirming the actual position if you post a large clear scan of the front of the stamp so that relevant flaws might be identified.

Will do. Sorry I forgot.

I hope this helps. I can try again in natural light in the morning.

Your 1/- roo with the inverted watermark looks like Position 6, the top right corner. The watermark by the angle of the A looks to me like the First Watermark. If so, its ACSC 2017 catalog price is $500. If it is Position 2L6, then it has an ACSC-listed flaw and another $100 can be added to its CV.

Note that there are also listed flaws on other plates/watermarks at positions 3L6, 4L6 and 4R6 which have interesting premiums for both the inverted watermark and flaws.

You are quite correct. It is the first watermark. I posted this in a different thread some time ago. http://goscf.com/t/54858&whichpage=23#640734 It is a mint, lightly hinged copy with an annoying brown mark in Roo's neck which is visible on the front. There is no flaw that I can see above the US, so it is probably 1L6. Anyway, great information as always.


Note: Sorry that I hijacked this KGV thread.

Here is a KGV that is proving a little difficult for me. I've reviewed my ACSC and went through a stamp wiki on another site, but nothing matches. I have this as Scott 63a, ACSC 86, the brown/red-brown variety with large multiple watermark. Looking through my ACSC, I found a possible variety 86(5)ja, which is listed as "White Flaw in Crown, state II". From ACSC, we have this picture:

The Wiki website shows this same feature on their OS version of the stamp (Electro 5, pane location L57), 86(5)j:

My stamp does not appear to match either one completely. Here is the entire specimen:

Note that the top crown is similar, but shows a less obvious flow left of the crown:

There is also an interesting feature at the bottom, where the T of Three is connected to the L of Halfpence:

I'm leaning towards a tin shed flaw, but would love to hear your opinions. Thanks in advance.

Sorry folks, I woke this morning as if from a nightmare. Why were marginal lines included in the watermark?
Paper is manufactured to a standard size (A0?). The watermarks are part of that manufacturing process. To decide their location the maker would calculate the area of the paper required for stamps and set his margins and gutters, accordingly. In the case of the Kangaroo, a narrow stamp, less paper would be needed so the margins would be wide. If that paper was then used to print a wider stamp, (requiring narrow margins), the marginal lines and adjacent text (which was also part of the paper manufacturing process) would appear.
What I don't understand is why the marginal lines were included in the watermark in the first place. They clearly were not required as guide lines when the paper was trimmed, witness some KGV's having to be printed outside the margins.
They seem to have no practical purpose. They add nothing to our aesthetic appreciation of a "blank" sheet of paper, since they are hardly visible. They do, perhaps, clearly designate where the manufacturer, or purchaser's name can go, so that no one can see it and it can be trimmed off. But, if they have no practical value why bother to incorporate them in the watermark?

Boreraig,

Although marginal watermark lines are not necessary for the printing of the stamps (and not used for later papers), I guess it may also have been considered 'not necessary' to create watermark impressions in the margins where the stamps were not intended to be printed.

D. M. Neil (1947) on the KGV 1d Surface Printed Types:

Excerpt from III. The Plates:
"Each plate consisted of two horizontal panes of 60 units with 15mm wide space between them."

Four plates may have been set up in a block for printing (480 stamps) or two plates (240 stamps) - e.g. 240-on printings using the right plates only.

Another relevant excerpt from D. M. Neil:

IV. Papers and Watermarks
"Paper for printing from the four plates in a composite block required further provision for an external margin throughout and for internal vertical and horizontal margins at the junctions of the plates, so that when the printer's large sheet was cut into four Post Office sheets of stamps (corresponding with the four plates) each of the Post Office sheets should have a suitable margin for handling....

.... the paper introduced for this purpose was.. ..Watermarked Large Tudor Crown... spaced to provide one 'Crown A' about central for each stamp, also for a thin surround watermark line for each pane of sixty stamps and for the words 'Commonwealth of Australia' in one vertical margin and 'Postage' in the other vertical margin of each Post Office sheet with four single lined crosses, one in each corner of each such sheet."

Later papers were produced without the marginal watermark lines or words i.e. continuing the watermark to the edges of the paper, in an effort to avoid stamps having 'missed' the watermark entirely.

Boreraig




The Kangaroo and Map stamps had their own paper for printings on first and third watermarks. The dimensions of these papers were different from the KGV paper. The KGV paper was used on limited Kangaroo printings in 1915 due to non arrival of Kangaroo paper stocks. The introduction of standard size papers to the Kangaroo production lines started in 1928 with the small multiple watermark.

The source for your comments is unreliable.

Regards
Frank

Sorry Frank, I think I have misled you. My comment was pure speculation. What I was trying to say is that marginal lines are NOT part of the printing process, they are introduced when the paper is manufactured. Then when you print bigger stamps, on paper with the margin lines already embedded in the paper, those lines will appear in the stamps.
Which brings me back to the question, "what was their purpose"?