Barwani Sg 23B - Second Most Misidentified Stamp Of Barwani

I've just received another copy of the Barwani 4 Anna orange-brown perforated with a sewing machine, and I was reminded of how often it's misidentified.

Of course, there's a good reason for the misidentification. It's a rather scarce and expensive stamp, and there's another much more common and much less expensive stamp with which it's regularly confused.

So for this little lesson, here is an example of sewing machine perforations:



Notice how the perforations are just pin-pricks in the paper - they don't punch out holes, or anyway leave the notorious hanging chads.

Here's the same stamp from the back:



It looks as if the sewing machine operator first 'perforated' around the stamp image, and then thought better of it, and decided to leave some margins This is SG 23.

And here is the common stamp, SG 23b, often confused with SG 23:



Notice the large, clean (relatively speaking) perforation holes, with the paper actually punched out. This is typical of SG 23b.

If all you want for your collection is an example of the 4 Anna brown of Barwani, SG 23b is your man. It's the cheapest of the four types. If you're a demon completionist, though, beware!

Hi Tony

Colombia stamps from 1900 to about 1904 were also sewing machine perforated, as well as imperf and perf. If the sewing machine needle broke they would replace it and sometimes not the same needle size. I have some stamps that show this. One side is one needle size and the other sides are a different needle size. I have seen one side being half one needle size and the half a different size.

The sewing machine perfs you show are not that "crisp". Is that common and are there other issues with sewing machine perfs?

Jerry B

Jerry, the sewing machine perforations were a very short-lived experiment. They're only found on this issue, and the scarcer orange-brown shade, SG 23c:



Both shades show the same gauge of needle used. The needle may well have broken, which might have convinced the printers to give the experiment up. In any case, they never tried it again.

There are no figures on numbers issued, but judging by their scarcity, I'd guess the total printing, taking in both shades, would have been in the low hundreds.

The common type 4 Anna, SG 23b



was perforated with the gauge 7 device - whatever it was - that Barwani was using regularly at that time.

(The Gibbons numbering is a bit odd because they only recognised the orange-brown shade (SG 23c) relatively recently. Rather than re-number, Gibbons simply added the new shade on, after the perforated version.)