India SC 20, Sg 54, 55 And SC 31, Sg 75, 76

Are there any scans that show the differences between these two stamps side by side?

Hi Jogil,

The current Gibbons on page 275 shows the difference between the dies.

For die II the white lines to the right of 'INDIA' break into the inner white circle.

Hi Bobby De La Rue

I think Bobby's comment is referring to the 8 anna stamps. This site below may be of help to you. The main difference is that in the (later) die II stamps, the Queen's features, especially the mouth and eyebrow are more firmly drawn, and she is a bit darker under the chin. Compare the 2 stamps on the right:

https://(20130207) Not allowed by the Staff.com/en/stamps/list/variant/298840

Apparently this site is deemed too commercial sorry.

Using the SG catalogue numbers jogil provided, my reply was referring to the half anna.

I wasn't going to copy images from the current SG though, I didn't want to breach any copyright.

Hi Bobby,
I zoomed in on the 2 stamps on the site that cannot be cited, and you are spot on with the upper frame difference. From a distance the eyebrow and darker chin are quite obvious.

22crows: If you cannot post the web address on here, please do email it to me by clicking on my alias. Thanks.

I already did that.

Bobby De La Rue and 22crows: Thanks for your help. Here are the pictures of the two different Dies.

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words or sometimes even drawings as can be clearly seen below:

Die I: Die II:

My interest regarding these stamps is that India Scott 31, Stanley Gibbons 75, 76 from 1873 appears to be the first issued dry printed (on dry pregummed paper) stamp. It was printed by relief/letterpress/typography and not by recess/engraving/intaglio. I was trying to compare this stamp to its wet printed counterpart Scott 20, Stanley Gibbons 54, 55 from 1865 with regards to their design dimensions. However, since they have different printing dies, this might not work for comparison purposes.

Here is some information from the book The De La Rue History of British & Foreign Postage Stamps 1855 to 1901, by John Easton, pp. 190-191: