Watermarks Inverted And Sideways On Early Great Britain Stamps

Hello,

I don't know much about GB stamps but I am getting into it a bit. when I look at my catalogues I wonder about the watermarks quite much. Also for US stamps I am always interested in the watermark orientation. But the British stamps don't seem to have a regular way or the watermark orientation for all early issues. Of course, the normal orientation is upright. But other orientations exist but have little premium.

what I found out:
- from the George V stamps on, with coils and booklets, the watermark orientation is because of this, so coils: sideways, and booklets: inverted.
- in general the inverted watermarks of the earliest issues happened quite often so are not rare.

what I don't know:
1) do sideway watermarks exist for stamps before George V?
2) what about the inverted or sideways watermarks for stamps from George V on and later that are not possible coil and booklet stamps, were those also made quite often? (for example Elizabeth II issues with values higher than the coil/booklet values) I find the higher values for example in my old Michel catalogue also with sideway and inverted watermarks, so how happened this (often) if not for coils and booklets?

The only watermark sideways stamps of Victoria are the horizontal format values of the 1883/4 set (2d, 2.5d, 6d, 9d). These are also known sideways inverted i.e. with the crown pointing left viewed from the back)
No Edward VII stamps have sideways watermarks other than an excessively rare halfpenny green only known used.
Later sideways watermarks come from coils or booklets. The highest values of QE2 Wilding issues found sideways or inverted is the 4d.
Of course, some commemoratives have sideways watermark such as the 1/3 Parliamentary Conference stamp of 1961

thank you.

indeed I have problems now to find the examples of high value watermark varieties in my old Michel again :).
but at least I see the 1924 George V stamps with also inverted watermark, also for the higher values while no inverted watermarks for the other high values of George V (and QE II as I have to admit). What was the reason fot the 1924 inverted watermarks?

thank you also for your answer about the sideway watermarks before George V.
If I may add: what about the inverted watermarks of this era, I see some in the catalogue, but not for all stamps. Still, it seems, as I read somewhere, that the inverted watermark is not a rarity of the early GB stamps. This is also what all catalogue values of the inverted watermarks indicate. It's just not easy to understand this: there are some, but still very few early GB stamps with inverted watermarks, but those have not a big premium? So most stamps have no watermark error, some stamps have an error, but when it happened, then it happened often...? (sorry, I see that my last text is not easy to read).

I could now also look at the Michel Classic Europe catalogue and find a lot differences to my old Michel for Europe and GB from the 1970s. I guess I need a new GB catalogue :).

But anyway, I think the questions will remain the same even then. Thank you again Tony, for the answers, that helped me a lot.

Still, I try to write a bit better what I don't understand here.

Why were there so many inverted watermarks in early GB stamps, and what was the reason for the inverted ones in 1924?

If it was not a very unusual thing to make stamps with inverted watermarks, why are so many prices in Michel (also in the new version I saw now) missing, and on the other hand the stamps with prices have only little premium, so is there no real market for watermark orientations in Great Britain? I mean if there are quite few stamps known that there is no price given (--,--) then I would normally think that the others with prices have more than 2x or 3x premium.

Not any sort of expert, but inverted watermarks are listed in Gibbons's GB Specialised catalogues, and carry a premium. They're also listed, in simpler form, in Stoneham's catalogue

https://www.worldstamps.co.uk/stone...129729-p.asp

The incidence and relative rarity of inverted watermarks depends to some extent on the printing method. Early stamps were always printed on sheets, so if a sheet was inverted so is the watermark. A batch of paper may be placed inverted for the printer to use, and being busy, the printer may not notice the watermark orientation.

Later printing methods involved printing on a continuous roll of paper. Here the cause of inversion is when a part roll may have had to be rewound onto another roller - a damage to the paper may cause this.

Many collectors ignore watermarks. Especially those who use simplified catalogues such as Stanley Gibbons's 'Stamps of the World'. Their collections are often a source of good finds, as I have found to my benefit.

thank you both. With the answers in this thread and further reading in my catalogues and the internet I know much more now about GB watermarks.

which catalogue number is the Edward II halfpenny that you mentioned, Tony? I don't find it anywhere.

and my last questions about this topic would be: I read somewhere that you can distinguish the coil and booklet stamps from the sheet stamps not only by the watermark. So that there are stamps with watermark sideways or inverted but they are sheet stamps with those watermark orientations in error. But I can't see any chance to know that those were sheet stamps, how can you find out?

Well, we are now getting very specialised.
Photogravure stamps reveal printing direction by high power magnification of the edges of the print, but that is rather too long winded to describe easily on this forum.
Most coil and booklet stamps have perfs that have been trimmed on one or more edge. In extreme cases the trimming can result in a straight edge, but again, look at the perf teeth through a powerful magnifying glass, as when a stamp is torn out from a sheet the paper fibres will be ragged as opposed to straight cut.

thank you again. Yes, the perforation is indeed a good hint, I should have known that... so I will take this as an identification step, and only in rare cases where I don't know anything, I will look further about the printing method and paper direction.