Great Britain Philatelic Society

Up until now our collecting has always been focused around pre-decimal stamps. Due to a sequence of recent events, out collection has been catapulted way past 15th February 1971.

We are now trying to get to grips with the decimal Machins and feel that it may be time to invest in a UV lamp (or two?) any advice regarding type/cost, Mains/battery etc. would be most appreciated.

Ralph and Sue

looking forward to answers!
I bought the Uvitec standard years ago but do not find it much help at all. I tend to hold things up to the light instead. Certainly an easy way for detecting green, blue, violet etc would be something I would also indulge in if not too expensive!
Welcome to the group
regards
James

sorry but my comments are basically about Wildings

Which type of lamp did you use when considering Wildings and Sterling Machins?

If you did not use a lamp you need to go back and start again. Phosphor bands were considered essential originally - for the sorting of mail - although much later dropped out.

Any UV lamp - which you use and find easy with Wildings will be OK for phosphor bands on decimal Machins.

However if tyou consider the papers/coatings.....
I always used a short wave lamp, but all the other experts(?) stated long wave is best - but you can use a short wave lamp with a black
plastic covering(piece of stamp mount) to make short become long.

Determine your sample pieces from those which are unmistakable -- and the best of british!

This all depends on what you're collecting. Up until the coloured fluor issues all you need is a short wave lamp (remember to not look directly at the lamp when lit as short wave UV is not a particularly healthy thing). Once you get to the fluor issues you really do need long wave. As Robin said, you can kind of do them with a short wave lamp, but the deeper you go the more you really need the long wave. Personally I'd go with both from the outset.

Its worth noting that the early JET phosphor varieties and later, so called A2B, phosphors require the long wave to be sure of identifying.

I use a basic Prinz handheld battery unit which I bought with a short wave tube plus a spare long wave tube and I just swap the tubes as required (you need to keep the transparent cover off if you're going this route though). The one issue is that for the weaker reacting phosphors, you need a dark room, which can be a tad inconvenient, especially at a fair or the likes.

This is probably a good place to start and will last you for a good while. You can always upgrade to something more substantial later if you felt it necessary.

Hope that helps.

Scott

PS. I'd also recommend buying the Deegam Machin Handbook from www.deegam.com it tells you everything you could ever want to know on the subject and is designed to let you be as basic or advanced as you like.

Thanks for the replies. Up until now we have managed by holding the stamp at an angle to the light to see if it had phosphor bands or not. That seemed to suffice as far as I was concerned. As we look closer at post '71 stamps it appears that we need to be able to determine The phosphor’s colour and paper type. This is all new to us as our main interest has always been at the other end of the chronological order.

I think we will acquire one of each of the small portable lamps for now and see how we go from there.

Thanks for the recommending The Complete Machin Handbook, Looks very interesting…

Ralph.