Need Help With Turks And Caicos Watermark Identification

Hi, I recently bought a lot of British Commonwealth stamps and have been sorting through them. A Turks and Caicos stamp (Scott #4/Stanley Gibbons #104a) that is supposed to have a single Crown CA watermark instead has the watermark in the attached images. Can anyone help identify this?

Hi WSO,

This looks like a marginal watermark from the edge of the pane/sheet to me.

Hope this helps

Agree with Bobby. This is the marginal watermark for the normal crown CA watermark. It is not uncommon for this to happen with small-size Queen Victoria-era stamps. It's not exactly the same, but a similar full sheet watermark is shown here:
https://goscf.com/t/63049

Thank you Bobby De La Rue and hy-brasil for your replies. What still doesn't make sense to me is that the "S" in the "TS" at the bottom is backwards in relation to the "E" at the top. Does such a thing as a tete-beche watermark exist?

I agree, that looks curious


We need an image of the dandy roll, for that emission.

This fits very nicely with the example that Rod had posted on the Gambia thread:

Here's a section of that example reversed to show the letters here:


Just offset the image a little more to the side than usual and you'll get the effect that appears on the stamp.

That is very helpful nigelc, thank you!

Interesting. Now I just need to remember it!

Nigel,
I still don't get it
I cannot see how the E and the ST can arrive on 1 stamp ?

Surely the dandy roll covers the entire wet sheet of stamp paper prior to drying, how can an E arrive adjacent to the ST ?
Of course it must happen due to the example, but dashed if I can see it.

Discombobulation.

Hi Rod,

I guess the stamp paper was prepared in a long roll to which the dandy roll was applied and only afterwards was this roll cut into relatively small sheets.

This would rather like a print cylinder rolling across a finished sheet (or roll) of paper during printing.

As a result the sheet edges didn't always line up with the intended edges of the watermark pattern.

Sometimes the offset would be just enough to bring the edge inscriptions on to the area where the outside column or row of stamps was printed.

In this case the offset was just a little more to allow for parts of two edge inscriptions to appear on the same stamp.

Here is wild speculation that is hated by so many here. But I think it fits.

I took the right side of the Gambia sheet shown by Rod and lined it up the best I could with the left side. We get:

Now I have spaced the watermarked letters farther apart than the spacing shown on the stamp above, but note the orientation of the E vs TS. I think it fits.

So the full sheet that the stamp above came from got trimmed quite badly for whatever reason. That's my guess. And if that's not typical for this Turks & Caicos issue (please do run off and check yours), that is a rather neat stamp.

Oriented as shown in the OP:

Nigel,
well that is extraordinary.
Never seen anything like it before in 17 years of collecting.
I'll keep this stamp image and take it, or email it to parties for evaluation.
I was always under the impression the dandy roll was the width of the paper mulch during processing.

HB...we posted at the same time

Nice explanation, I get that, but always thought the dandy roll was only the width of the paper mulch.
Your explanation suggests 2 dandy rolls side by side?



Never experienced that ?
Nothing wrong with speculation, as long as it is noted.
Well done HB.

Ah! The penny dropped

It was the orientation of the dandy roll, I presumed incorrectly
I think I see it now....Sheesh.

Orientation of dandy roll, paper coming through top to bottom...........

No. Wild guess again: The paper is produced on a roll and the roll runs horizontally lengthwise relative to the dandy roll. Again, "dandy roll" is assumed to mean that the wires are mounted on a roller to continually repeat on the paper or not-quite-paper emerging from the rest of the machinery.

EDIT: Ah, good. Knew you'd get it.

Thanks HB,
Suggestion: That is still extraordinary to see on a stamp....

Corollory?: The dandy roll watermark was not made for that stamp format,
the only way that Wmk could arrive.