Basic Question About Basic Belgian Definitives

Hi, I started going through a medium-sized accumulation of Belgian stamps I've had around for a while. I have a question about some of the 1940s and 1950s definitives.

First, here's King Baudouin on Scott 452, possibly one of the world's least unusual stamps:



Second, here's an equally unexotic sample from the 1951 Lion of Belgium series:



Why such a wide variation? Besides the striking color changes in the Baudouin issues in particular, they can also be anywhere from reasonably sharp to quite blurry - to the point where the King's facial expression seems to change from one stamp to the next. Did they use lousy ink? Did what they thought was good ink fade over time? Why are some of them so blurry? Was the printing company a hive of antimonarchists?

I'm curious, because quite a few Belgian stamps look to be of high quality all around; why are these definitives so...well, shoddy?

Maybe different printings over time and soaking them in hot water changes some .

Floortrader is correct- these stamps were reprinted many, many times thus creating a multitude of shades. Michel lists the main differences, and there are a lot of them. In stamps printed before about 1964 or so, shades occur frequently as the printers struggled mixing the ink in perfect proportions every time.

These were stamps printed by the multiple millions if not billions over the years. There's bound to be some variations as the plates wear, slight differences in the inks, various environmental factors over the decades since they were printed, etc. It's a big reason why so many collectors focus on definitives such as these, despite the fact that they are extremely common. For those that enjoy such things, searching through a pile of stamps such as these offers an opportunity to find many varieties for their collections.

The image below comes from a current lot for sale on ebay and shows good shades for 3 of the values. I'm glad you asked this question as I never noticed there are perf varieties of this issue. Scott doesn't list them that I know of but many perf varieties also have different shades.

Thanks, everybody! The Baudouin variations strike me as extreme even for a series that was reprinted many times; but that series was around for almost two decades, and for all I know some of the ink they were using in 1952 was later found to have environmental issues and had to be replaced a couple of times.

I looked at the grid and borders on the Lions series for five minutes this afternoon and already started to feel infinity closing in around me. If I get snowed in for a couple of days this winter, charting them could be a fascinating project. I never even thought to check the perfs!

And for even more variety, try a UV light: