Birds Perched, Birds Flying, Birds Aground

I agree... about the only self-adhesives I have in my collection are some Australian issues from the early 1990's featuring dinosaurs.

I refer to a lot of modern issues as "stickers". A co-worker vacationed in the Maldives a few years ago and I asked her to send me a postcard with an interesting stamp or two on it. Instead, she brought me back some stamps she got at the local PO... they told her she couldn't use them to send mail! And they are Scott listed. They were designed for collectors, not to actually be used. Stickers.

FYI, I posted some images on a different thread, but accidentally used the same image names, so they simultaneously replaced some of the recently posted images on this thread. Corrected now, but people looking at my postings must have been confused as to why I was using Godzilla images on a bird themed thread.

I wish the old days would come back. Yes, they are just stickers now, and cannot be soaked well, or so I hear. I haven't soaked stamps in years, so I don't know how it would work with the stickers. Unfortunate, really.

The self-adhesives will NOT come off paper that way.

I thought so. Well, I guess it doesn't matter to me. These "stickers" are not, like I mentioned, going to be collected by me! Good to know though, thanks!

I thought I should bring this thread back around to birds, so here's Central African Republic #C2, a Guinea Turaco (Tauraco persa), the stamp as issued, an imperf, the bottom portion of a plate proof sheet (trial color essays) and the FDC.

Now that is a nice piece! Sorry to go off topic. I like this birds example!

Nils, great to see those trial color essays.
The French Printer used the ChambonTD3 Taille-Douce 3 colour press for this issue were
with only one plate and 3 ink stations at one pass printed 3 colours.
It was also possible to combine or overlap 2 colours to make
a third in this case blue and magenta for the brown branch and the
reddish brown section of the wing.
There were some good discussions here about this years ago on this thread
https://goscf.com/t/40873&whichpage=1

There are reasons why French stamps (France, colonies,Andorra, Monaco etc etc)
are so beautiful for example those bird stamps you've been showing.

Start off with the best stamp engravers such as your favourite Gandon but
he was just one of so many superb engravers the French Government printer used.

Have top of the line printing presses

And finally they employed expert pressmen who knew how to use and perfect
the equipment.

gnstamps80, no worries, that's the fun of these discussions!

lithograving, thanks once again. I collect the trial color essays with the same passion as other proofs but have only shared a few so far. I'll put on some more in future.

Since Gandon is my specialty, I'm over-representing him, but there are certainly many outstanding French artists. I especially like the work of Georges Bétemps, and have sometimes considered starting a specialty collection of his work as well (I'm only discouraged by the thought of all the material I've passed up over the years!).

You know your printing! I have some lovely test stamps... what Yvert & Tellier call "experimental vignettes"... by Gandon that were engraved for the express purpose of testing the TD6 press back in 1960. I haven't scanned them yet and they don't fit the bird theme, so I'll post them at a later date in a different thread. The TD6 press produced some of the first multi-colored, engraved stamps, including the well-known bird issues of France of that same year. Here's one as an example, Scott #979, the Atlantic Puffin (Fratercula arctica). Since it was a new process, there are more than the usual number of errors associated with the issue. The second image is one such example from my collection, where the color red was accidentally omitted.

And since we're discussing trial color essays and the 1960 bird stamps of France, here is a strip of France #981, the European Bee-Eater (Merops apiaster).

That scan came through kind of small, so I broke up the image to show more detail.

I don't quite understand all of the terms used in these recent posts, but it sounds intriguing! Nils, are you primarily a specialty collector? I know about your favorite artists already, but would you say that you tend to collect unusual items, unique items, primarily? Or is it more of a general mix? Regardless, these birds stamps are beautiful!

That Scott 979 missing red is a 100% perfect example of a missing colour.
Not some too much sunlight effect or chemical manipulation.

The printer did have some teething problems with the TD6 in the beginning
but they got the hang of it and produced some of the most colourful engraved stamps ever printed.

From my set of France Scott 978 - 981, three values looked alright
but the 45c has misregistration and areas which lacked ink.

gnstamps80, these days I just focus on collecting the one artist (Gandon) and have all but abandoned my other collections, though I still "putter" with them now and again, and so have occasional scans to share. The current collection takes plenty of my time and money all on its own.

lithograving... my biggest problem with the 1960 bird series is the 'flaking' off of the ink, which happens with most of the stamps to one degree or another. I do my best to find clean copies, but for a couple of them, they prove elusive (even though the stamps are perfectly common).

The shifted red color on the 45c (Scott #980, "Eurasian" Green-winged Teal, Anas crecca crecca) is a recorded error. I even have a deluxe proof that suffers a little bit from the problem. Here's a properly printed example for comparison, and one of my own examples of the red shifting

Incidentally, if you collect a particular artist, it pays to look at the associated first day cover and maximum card art for any particular issue, as they sometimes contributed to that as well. Here is an FDC and card for #980 (again), where the cachet on the envelope and the art on the card are both signed by Pierre Gandon. He did envelope and maximum card art for this entire set.