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Friday 15 January 2010

Private Machin Overprints

Its amazing what you can find on the World Wide Web. Have you ever been tempted to make your own overprints? Well I can tell you after visiting the website of The Overprints Society it is nothing new, even Machins have attracted private productions.

One such Machin is that of this 6p value available from the 1995 Congress at Hayling Island "overprinted" for the occasion when Francis Kiddle signed the "Roll
of Distinguished Philatelists".

These were produced by Victor Short, and several can be found illustrated in "100 years of the Philatelic Congress of Great Britain, 1909-2009" by Colin Searle, which is available via the ABPS.

It is obviously very easy for anybody to manufacture their own overprints on any stamp. This is done mostly to gain publicity for stamp dealers, stamp associations and I will not rule out although I have no positive proof of this ,occasionally to hoodwink serious collectors. Most have been manufactured for gifting as souvenirs to collectors.

Apparently it is not against the law to do this, but (I have read) " it does render the overprinted stamps invalid for postage"

Early in the 1980s the late Ken Gibson (who at that time ran the Lundy Philatelic Bureau on behalf of the Landmark Trust) gave out as souvenirs of certain values of the then current Machin definitives overprinted.

Although it is not illeagal, Ken did not get away with it lightly. As a result of these unauthorised overprints (and many others on Lundy stamps) his contract was terminated. These shown above are on phosphorous paper; it is said "that other values may also exist"

Other overprints in private hands were issued to those who attended the Scarborough: Philatelic Congress of GB in 1998.

Various stamps were overprinted "PCGB SCARBOROUGH 1998"in different formats. These were only available to delegates attending the congress. I believe that similar items were produced for other Congresses also.

I remember when we first started this blog (many moons ago now) I reported on a private 1st class Machin upside down overprint from Australia. Sorry , you will have to plough through the archives to find it.

We also showed other Machins overprinted Somalia. Again go back through the archives for this one. Another post reported on a government Machin which included pictures of a 2d overprint also another early post which shows some rather nice Boots labels.

What ever next: A Machin Mania overprint perhaps :-)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a great idea, Roy. With the new self-adhesive Machins, it ought to be easy to feed them through an ordinary household ink jet or laser printer.

That's an advantage of self-adhesives that I never thought of.

--Larry

Anonymous said...

Larry, Roy

I have been collecting used Machins for some time now, whist searching the web for Machin information I came across this blog by sheer accident.

I Spent 4 hours reading back reports and still have pages to visit. I must say it is a brilliant service to Machin collectors, keep up the great work.

Tobin

Stefano said...

Interesting.
New for me.
Political or not, do they follow in Kernow and various overprints Ulster footsteps ?
All these gone by post.

My true compliments for this beautiful blog.

Stefano

Tony Ward said...

I just hate it when I have been trying to find machin overprints [right back to Ulster, NO GUNS, Sinn Fein, Kernow or whatever] in single blocks and/or covers and then here are 6 or 7 that I have never seen. There seems to be no dealer interest in these. Please point me in the right direction.

VICTOR SHORT said...

The Francis Kiddle Cogress overprint was produced by my friend Francis...............I produced about a dozen so they are going to be very 'scarce'..

My Congress overprints were generally only available at Congress.

All were overprinted with an electric typewriter.

It is such a great pleasure to see so many fakes of my overprints generally on used stamps using values that I never ever issued..........fame whilst still alive


Happy collecting


Victor Short

VICTOR SHORT said...

SORRY SHOULD HAVE SAID FOR MY FRIEND FRANCIS