Early South Africa Center Shift

I found this poor example in my collection. The center appears moved well to the right. All of my other uni-color stamps are well centered, almost to perfection, while the bi-color stamps are all well centered also. Was this stamp printed in two passes, one for the outside, and one for the inside? I've just never seen a uni-color stamp with a shift like this.

An interesting shift alright. I don't think it would be a rarity though but more of an oddity for an EFO collection. I am not sure if there are any South African specialists in our forum that can give you a more accurate account? Would be interesting to find out.

Chimo

Bujutsu

Calling Stampstudy !

Yeah, I'm hoping that someone has some information. I can't see any indication in my Scott's or Stanley Gibbons, but it would seem to me that the center should not be shifted like this. I'll post some standard items later.

The portraits move around a bit on both the single colors and the bicolors, but it is true that most are nicely centered. I am guessing that De La Rue's quality control is responsible for the general high standards of the printing.

I just made a quick pass through a hundred-plus stamps up to the 1/ value, and I didn't see any that had the portrait touching the frame, but a good number were shifted off of center. Though I don't have a cite for this, that tells me that they had to be printed in two passes.


The printer had to be awake for this one...


Too bad the perforator was out late the night before.
(Scott 4a, SG 5a block)

Here are some further examples from my collection. As you can see, there are very small indications of center-shifting, but nothing close to the 2 1/2d blue. Are the watermarks all the correct orientation for the tete beche pairs?

Staying close to the same topic, after I scanned these, I noticed the bottom ribbon of the 3d is not separated vertical lines like all of the other copies. Is this just a simple case of over-inking?



The Top Crown doesn't look too hot either.

The springbok is not oriented to the top of each stamp, if that is what you mean. Each pair has one normal watermark and one inverted watermark. Accordingly, the catalogue gives exactly equal values for inverted and normal watermarks for this denomination (the only one with tete beche pairs).

There is a very high CV listed for used examples of this stamp with a sideways watermark, but based on the CV, they must be rare birds.