Causes of flaws to background

Material relating to the philately of the reign of George VI.
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Robinr
Posts: 155
Joined: Fri Aug 27, 2010 6:00 pm

Causes of flaws to background

Post by Robinr »

Greetings all KGVI fans - and others who might be interested in the frequently-found variety of pinkish flaws on the background of the 1937 Coronation stamp.

Quite apart from the many white spots that seem to have occurred during the printing, this stamp frequently shows odd, pinkish flaws to the background that seem most likely to have occurred after printing.

Here are five examples.

Upper left. This neat and attractive (?) flaw was caused by an elastic rubber band having stuck to the surface. I scratched it, it popped off, and there was the flaw.

Upper middle. An extraordinary scattering of spots around the Queen's head, but not on it.

Upper right. A messy rough clouding on and around the queen's head.

Lower left. A few soft pale spots between the King's head and the Orb.

Lower right. Messy scraping all down the middle of the stamp, but apparently only on the background.

I am working my way through the last thousand of a package of 10,000 of the stamps I bought many years ago. There are many stamps with background flaws like this; but very few affect the royal couple, the crown or monogram - almost all are on the background. Some are obviously the result of scrapes and rough folds and creasing, some appear to be the result of some kind of solvent. But what strikes me is that this stamp seems to be particularly vulnerable to this kind of damage - as if the inking of the background was unusually thick and did not harden as well as the monocolour background of the KEVIII stamps that preceded it. The spots on stamps two and four here are unusual. The blob over the head caused by the rubber band is possibly unique. But stamps three and five are very typical in the way the damages/flaws look, number five especially.

I'm wondering whether anybody can cast a light on the matter? Could the inking weakness be a possibility - caused in essence by the design (and colour?) of the stamp?

Cheers, Robin (R)
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MIKE
Posts: 75
Joined: Sun Feb 07, 2016 1:44 pm

Re: Causes of flaws to background

Post by MIKE »

Tony - have a look at this one - appears to be a roller flaw across the kings face while taking some of the surface print with it.
Mike
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