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Thursday 30 May 2013

Catalogue Valuations


Way back in 2010 Cartor printed the Classic Album covers prestige booklets and we welcomed a strange phenomium on the Machin front with the 5p and 54p that had a revised typeface.

These stamps were printed in error, instead of using the standard Jeffery Matthews designed typeface this different new style was used believed to be a variant of Adobe Garamond.

Of couse these new values are completely different from the norm and many collectors scrambled to aquire them in order to fill the gaps which would have been so evident on their album pages.


So what of a catalouge value for these stamps? Many thought that the 5p would eventualy be equivielent to the elusive 1/2p side band as it only exists from this one source. The incorrect type face on the 54p value would catalouge at less as the error was  repeated in the Royal Society Prestige booklet, which was released in February of the same year and was printed (also by Cartor ) at the same time as the Classic Album Covers book.

The Connoisseur Catalouge, which in my own opinion over values these stamps lists them in mint condition as singles accordingly.

5p revised type face

CL50 Claret  (Classic Albums) @£5.50
CL51 pale Claret (Classic Albums) @ 3.50

54p revised type face

CL540 Pale rust (Classic Albums) @ £2.95
CL541 Pale reddish Rust (Royal Society) @ £2.75

Not only are they as far away from the value of the 1/2p side band as they could be, they are probably over valued by at least 50%.

What is the up to date GB value for these two stamps? Just curious, can someone with an up to date Gibbons catalogue let me know?

4 comments:

Ian - Norvic said...

SG's Concise catalogue 2013 has:

Y1765 5p £3.50 mint/used

Y1783 54p £2.00 mint/used

These prices seem to be in line with other recent one-offs in PSBs.

The earlier litho 5p Y1763 from the Britain Alone and Aerial Post PSBs (although the two stamps are different) is £2.50.

The 50 lake-brown Y1764 from the WWF book is £2.00.

In fact, there are few litho-printed stamps under £1 as almost all of them came from PSBs and users of pre-printed albums often fail to pick these up at face value when they are still available, so demand on dealers drives up the prices.

The ½p side-band, of course, was in limited supply with 100% perfs because the perfs were trimmed when the booklets were made up.

Machin Man said...

Many Thanks Ian

Anonymous said...

I think it's a bit early to judge the value of 2010 varieties. Sometimes it takes the market a while to adjust to actual supply and demand.

Another consideration is the information about new issues is now very much more available than it was in 1971, or even 1991. Ian's excellent blog, along with our own humble efforts and others, complement groups such as the Modern British Philatelic Circle and the Machin Collectors Club. Everyone should know what is available and needed for their collections.

Still, shortages occur. I noticed not long ago, when filling in some gaps in my 2009/2010 issues with security overprints, that a few of those stamps have been somewhat hard to find and costly to acquire.

Another issue that surprises me is the 1997 high value castles printed by Enschede. They were on sale for nearly two years, before being replaced by Machins, yet they are quite pricey compared to the various Harrison versions that preceded them.

--Larry

Ian - Norvic said...

Thanks for the tribute, Larry, but without all the contributors and readers our blog would be much the poorer.

I can't say for sure, but it may be that the price difference on the Castles was also partly due to some people not finding out about them soon enough.

A similar situation occurred with the Consignia branded Christmas Smilers sheets which I, for one, was using as postage without realising that I ought to have an extra whole sheet of each. (Fortunately I was able to buy them at face!)