Irish Birds Definitives - 1997-2003

The Irish birds series is quite complicated because of the various changes in valuta: LSD [pounds, pennies] - dual - euro [cents].

And because of the various printers involved in their self-adhesive stamps.

The Hibernian 2014 catalogue does list them like this:



For the Heritage stamps the Australian production is referred to as with "sharp points" , but why not for the other Australians?



The Irish Security Printers did use a "kiss die cut" with 13 teeth between the "tips'" OR 12 teeth along the long side of the stamp!

The Australian products have a "kiss die cut" with 13/16 teeth in various shapes and according to Hibernian with various gauges!

The earliest one - the 32p Heritage issued in 1990 has "sharp" teeth and a supposed gauge of 11 1/4!



The 32p Birds were issued in April 1997 and had clearly sharp teeth! Gauge according to Hibernian 11 1/2 [sic!] for exactly the same kiss-die-cut as the 32p Heritage ...

And were printed in offset-litho with a stochastic screen!

The 30p Birds were issued in May 1998 and have also supposedly gauge 11 1/2....



The first column has no phosphorescence, in the second and third column the difference is in the "kiss die-cuts"!