Concise, not so Concise

With my move to Spain, although I am one hour ahead (time wise) from Britain I am perhaps a few months behind on reading my incoming mail. I have this sent over every few months from a forwarding address in the UK.

One packet in particular which arrived last week was the February edition of the ABPS news which is the official magazine of the Association of British Philatelic Societies. In it I was delighted to read a shortened version of a paper. The 40th Anniversary of the Machin Definitive Issue TonyWalker.

Below: just 2 of the pages scanned from the ABPS magazine.





Without going into great detail, it is a brief summary of the design process culminating in the issue and also mentions The RCA exibition and the book written by Douglas Muir.

In one section which took my attention the report states: " I looked at the SG Collect British Stamps catalogue for 2007 to try and get an idea of the extent of the decimal definitives issues, bearing in mind I have so far refered only to the short lived pre-decimal stamps. ( 5 pages)

SG list 84 basic stamps with phosphor bands, plus 70 on phosphorised paper (All Over Phosphor ), some 40 lithographed issues and around a further 90 in with elliptical perforations introduced in 1993. In their Concise catalogue (2007) they record 66 diferent values in their list of 213 basic individual stamps. There are also several pages showing examples of the 104 booklet panes booklet panes available,"

Enter our one and only Larry Rosenblum

Continued from above :

"which Larry Rosenblum from the USA maintains is a major over simplication, and suggests the number is well over 200. And so it goes on. If one was to use one of the specialist Machin catalogues for the reference you could probably add a zero at the end of all those figures ! "

Well pointed out Larry.

There are a further 5 pages of information in the artical which describe the Cambridge Colour Trials in detail with several quality phographs. A blow up of one is below. This is a picture of the final essay of the 4d sepia with the value tablet on the right.All in all, the ABPS magazine for £1.50 is worth every penny, a riviting read. Published 4 times a year by the Association.

If you would like to subscribe the address is:

6 Nuuery Drive,
Thetford,
Suffolk
IP24 3EN,
UNITED KINGDOM.


Visiit their web site http://www.ukphilately.org.uk/

Posted by Roy