Sweden And Denmark Will No Longer Print Engraved Stamps

Just read on Glenn Morgan's stampprinters site http://www.stampprinters.info/DS44.pdf
that the government printers of both Denmark & Sweden
will no longer print engraved stamps or any stamps for that
matter, starting 2017.



French printer Cartor will now print all the stamps
for Sweden and Denmark presumably using the photo/litho
process.

Where will all those excellent engravers find work?

China maybe?

This is a sad, but inevitable end to a long run of nicely engraved and printed stamps.

Sad

When I got back into collecting in 1995, I focused on Sweden specifically because they still issued nice, engraved stamps. It's what drew me back into the hobby.

I received a booklet from Sweden Post in the late '90s that was all about the skill of their engravers and their exemplary stamp production. It still seems recent to me but I guess it was 20 years ago now.

I thought Swedish stamps went downhill a bit after 2000/2005 or so anyway, but I guess 2016 is my firm cut off now.

That's very sad.

Mark

I've always thought of the best stamps as "little engravings" because that's what they were, and Sweden was one of the best examples of that.

I've subscribed to, and collected, Swedish stamps for 40 years now. I'll have to re-evaluate if their quality falls off. They were one of the last producers of old-fashioned high quality stamps unlike the many bread labels and other stickers sold by so many countries.

I don't know much about printing, itself, but know that a good engraved stamp looks better than any other kind of stamp. Very sad. A cost-cutting measure, I'm sure. I'd prefer they just raise stamp prices to pay for engraving.

Some things, like coins, currency, and stamps, should always be made with the highest quality possible. Czeslaw Slania, the brilliant engraver of so many Swedish (and many other countries') stamps must be turning over in his grave. Not so long ago Sweden was celebrating its high quality engraved stamps very proudly. Now they turn around and basically cheap out.

In 2015, a PowerPoint presentation about philately by PostNord stated in bullet points: "Reduce cost: from intaglio to offset" and, perhaps a little more encouragingly, "2016: More offset - less intaglio". So, maybe there will still be the odd intaglio issue, although I have seen none in 2017 thus far. Will there be enough intaglio to maintain collector interest in current Swedish and Danish stamps? I personally doubt it. The vast majority of its philatelic income comes from its subscriber base - lose those folk and you lose the desire to produce beautiful stamps, with barcoded labels being sufficient. GLENN stampprinters.info

Very sad. I am going to keenly miss my (occasional) Wavy Lines new issues from Denmark but at least I will know what a complete collection looks like.

The PostNord website is promoting its 2018 new issue programme for Sweden. It states:

"All stamps are printed in offset at International Security Print[ers]."

So, it seems that we can dismiss any potential hope that there might have been for the odd engraved intaglio stamp.

GLENN