1965 Australia Christmas Gold Omitted

I've been away from this forum for quite a while but am back to stamps a bit. I have found an odd copy of Australia (Scott) 393, the 1965 Christmas issue. The "gold" looks quite blackish. I can't find an illustration of a true 393a with gold omitted. I am aware that these can be altered, and also that this may be just a changeling. I did see one on ebay, but the black lettering "Australia" was missing (possibly faked?), and it is not on this copy, so I remain confused. If anyone can enlighten me about this, I'd be grateful.

Yes, yours are common old changelings.

It is a printing that has very unstable ink. You can treat it with different kitchen produces to change colour and remove ink.

A stamp to be very wary of any ink changes.

Definitely a changeling.

Stray Feathers

This does not look like a changeling to me. It looks more likely that the right hand stamp is suffering from the registers being off.

If you examine the right hand stamp you will see a gray shadow on top and right hand edges, around the "5d" and in the country name box this is even more obvious. Each of the colours used to make up the picture have to be in exact positions or you get a register shift and the colours come out all wrong as in this case.

Read about it here https://www.formaxprinting.com/blog...ration-mean/

Regards
Frank

I'm a regular reader of SCF, but today Google's top search result brought me here :) I would also like to see what a true 393a looks like. Rod222, is your picture what that is? Or is that a picture of a common old changeling? What exactly is a changeling? If the gold is omitted, would it be omitted from the entire stamp or just a section of the stamp? I don't know how this particular stamp was printed…sorry for the odd questions.

@deprotinator, Rod222 no longer posts here. (some disagreement with someone caused him to focus on another forum).

Colour changelings are that: the colour is changed or faded. This can be due to exposure to (uv) light, through exposure to water, or through exposure to chemicals.

Also, colour-missing errors are what they say they are: the colour was never printed on that stamp. The colour is completely missing and not partly missing.