A Color Visual Guide To Tagging - Modern Varieties

Tagging on some of the modern stamp issues may not be what you expect. Here are some fairly unique examples for your viewing pleasure. Sorry a few are a bit fuzzy but I only had time for quick shots.

Tagging colors other than typical greenish color.

Typical green on left and bluish version on right.



Vivid blue overall with blue block tagging over the image as well.



Here is a real surprise, multicolored tagging. I know I wasn't expecting this when I first checked the tagging. If anyone knows why they did this I would interested.



Here is an example of multicolor on a booklet.



This looks more like a block hole devouring everything.



Now for some of my favorites. Some of these are really cool.

Non-rectangular block tagging. Can you guess which issue this is?



Tagging styles of two different countries on one printing, US and Canada.



The block tagging on these is not square and is very eerie when you see it. It reminds me of the Disney haunted house ride where you look in the mirror and see the ghosts riding with you.



This one is a quite spectacular non-rectagular block type tagging.



Pictures don't do these justice. The tagging shrouds the planets adding a level of depth and mystery to them.



Now for the big finish!

Radioactive bats! You don't want to encounter these on a dark night.



The latest in designer pets. You'll never lose them in the dark and when you go out to walk the dog at night no flashlight is required.

Thanks Mark. Some look better under SW than they do under normal light.

Mark,

What brand UV lamp are you using? SW or LW?

Thanks.
Jack

The bluish color is due to optical brighteners. But I am puzzled by what you call the multicolored tagging.

eyeonwall - For the multicolor I was describing how they appear visually which probably wasn't clear in my post. On the flower booklet the two upper left stamps appear to have a greener looking tagging versus the rest which looks blue. For the Star Trek same thing, some stamps have what appears to be a greenish tagging and other bluish. The transporter and spock hand appear green. I expect on the Star Trek for example the tagging is same across all the stamps. My guess not knowing is that the difference in color may be due to the base ink used.

jkelly - I use a common fairly inexpensive dual mode UV battery powered lamp. All pictures are using the Shortwave Mode which is required to view tagging. When looking for specific tagging types and purchasing from dealers I always check the tagging before purchasing. I have purchased and found way to often dealer stock not correct. I expect this happens with dealer stock by stamps getting put back in the wrong place in stock books when viewed by someone.

This gives a better idea of what I am referring to by multicolor tagging. The overall pane is block tagged as can be seen in this image. I had cropped the untagged area out. In this view you can see that it appears that there is blue & green tagging. The second image shows the same portion of the pane in normal light. The third is under under LW, which is challenging to capture on the camera. The color tagging color separation occurs in the white area between the images and I can't see anything obviously different in either the normal or LW light.

ms- sorry, I wasn't puzzled by what you wrote, rather puzzled by what is going on with these.

eyeonwall - no worries, I thought a little more detail and context would be helpful to everyone. A bit of a mystery as to why they would do this. Seems like it would be an added expense.

Upon closer examination the explanation for the apparent tagging color variation on the the Start Trek stamps and others is easily explained. The why I can't answer. If you look at the zoomed in image of the diamond tagging pattern you will see it gets reversed in some cases. To get the blue color the center of the diamond pattern has the taggant and the channels between don't. For green the channels have the taggant and the centers don't. For green there is essentially much more taggant applied.

Now that the tagging database is populated, I thought I would use this thread to post interesting varieties that I haven't seen posted for awareness.

This one is for Sc# 2477 the Fawn. For this issue there are at least three different patterned rollers used for the tagging. The first image shows a crosshatch pattern. The second image is a fine hexagon pattern. The third image shows a diamond pattern.

Sc #2118. Here is an interesting find I just recently found while going through a huge tube of US stamps I purchased. It is a tagging omitted version of 2118. Currently Scott only lists used 2117a and 2119a tagging omitted versions but without price. It only makes sense to me that tagging omitted versions for the other 3 varieties would exit.