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In the Commemorative Labels catalogue issued by the Cinderella stamp club there is listed six different types of labels for the Coronation of King George VI in 1937.

Although as a basic list, this publication is correct, I would like to show members here illustrations of the items in colour, as in the small hand book illustrations are limited and also in black and white (which does not show the design very well) and in addition cover each issue showing variations that show that the some of the "stamps" can be assigned to different plates or possitions on the printing plate.

To all those who collect cinderella items, I hope that the information that I present in the following posts will be of use and that any collection of these can be expanded as the items are still easy to obtain at a vey low price.

The following post will list the basic types as per the catalogue after which I will go into more details one issue at a time.

Any questions just shout and I will answer if I can ..
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The basic labels as listed in the catalogue are as follows ...

Posterstamp Publicty Ltd - sheet of 8
Houses of Parliament
Harrisons Regalia set - sheet of 12
Vallancey's Picture set - sheet of 60
Parkshaw's Picture set - sheet of 60
Coronation seal

(slight pause whilst I fire the scanner up)

Waiting with great interest and expectations and "baited" breath. regards

First we need to be able to assign the stamps to the correct issue and this is a fairly easy task as each issue, even where there are sheets of 8, 12 or 60 different designs can be identified from just seeing one copy of each - as all within the respective sheets are similar.

To this end I will first show one label from each issue so that any of these can be assigned to the correct publisher ..


Poster Stamp Publicity Ltd

The following two sets are very similar.

Both were produced in sheets of 60.
Both were printed by Harrison and Sons Ltd
And both sheets contain some identical designs.

However these are easy to seperate due to the colour of the border ...


Vallancey's Picture set - Violet frame


Parkshaw's Picture set - Brown frame

With this basic information and using the illustration above teh collector should now be able to assign any of these labels to their correct issue.

So now we come to the more involved task - dealing with each issue one by one.

For this I will deal with the easiest ones first (or at least those where I have a limited amount of information). This will be the single design issues of the coronation seal and the Houses of Parlaiament, followed by the Poster Stamp sheet of 8 and so on ...

Coronation Seal

The catalogue lists this as "Separate pictures of the King and Queen in dark blue in a brown frame"

No other details are given, however just by looking at the stamp we can see the inscription "Imperial order of the Daughters of the Empire" at the base within the circular wheel between the picture frames.

As for sheet size / layout I have no record of this and these labels seem to be the most difficult of the 6 basic types to find.

A number of examples that turn up have a straight / imperf edge and this is known at the right (as illustrated above) or on the bottom edge. Examples perforated all round seem to be less common than those with one straight edge.

In the late 1980's it was mentioned to me that this label also exists with the pictures in red - requests for sight of this item or a picture produced no results and every dealer I have mentioned this to over the years states that they have never seen one in red. My conclusion at this time is that such does not exist (but I keep looking just in case)

Houses of Parliament

The catalogue lists this as "Engr. stamps inscribed george VI, Coronation, Queen Elizabeth - Perf in blue, red, brown or green" with a scarcity rating of B for a single stamp - (not easy to find) No other details are given.

This sheet was printed in sheets of 25, (5x5), and I can confirm that the four colours notd are all known. As the design and sheet layout are all the same (as far as I know) I will refrain from posting scans of all the colours unless requested (for confirmation).

These stamps were produced for "The London Stamp exhibition 1937, Dorland Hall, Piccadilly Circus - October 16th to the 23rd" This and the fact that they were a souvenir of the coronation are stated on the left and right margins of the sheet.

The date (October 1937) is rather late for a coronation item and I wonder if these were planed then delayed for some reason, then revived for the exhibition.

It would be intresting to find one (tied) on cover that pre-dates the exhibition - although I have never seen one.

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Scan of the sheet to follow
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These two types are (as far as I am concerned) fairly easy with regards to listing the details - although the published details have already been expanded as noted.

From this point on things start to get a little more complex as the Poster Stamps sheet of 8 and the Harrison's sheet of 12 can be assign to plates, and in some cases, even single examples can be plated.

As can be seen, I have used fairly large pictures to illustrate the items (scanned at 300dpi) or in the case of sheets reduced in size so that they sit on the board properly.

As all that follows with regard to plates, flaws that allow single impressions to be plated and so forth - I will pause at this point and await any comments on whats already posted and any suggestions regarding the use of this size or smaller pictures (just concerned about load times for some users) or if prefered - if I should link to the picture on my server (which I feel would make following the details more difficult).

I await any comments - then will move on with the next issue

Posterstamp Publicity Ltd

First the details from the catalogue ..

"Sheet of 8 stamps costing 1/- in blue, red or purple." It then lists the eight designs, notes that the sheet is perforated and rates single stamps as relatively common and full sheets as rare.


Full sheet in red

The illustration of the sheet is what I believe to be the correct way up given the inscription in the margins and the application of the perforations. Thus from left to right we have the designs ..

1 .. The Houses of Parliament
2 .. Windsor Castle
3 .. The Coronation coach
4 .. The King and Queen
5 .. Princess Margret Rose
6 .. Princess Elizabeth
7 .. The Coronation chair
8 .. Westminster Abbey

I can confirm all three colours as I have these in full sheets and the application of the perforations is the same on all the sheets I have seen.

In addition to the details listed we can add the following to all the sheets ...

The printing is on white wove paper
The sheets are line perforated gauge 12 1/2
The gum type has been stated as being "fracture shinny gum" - (this was by another collector) - but what this actually is I have no idea. I would describe it as a thick gum, slightly streaky.
There is no watermark in the paper, however, a pseudo watermark is printed on top of the gum in grey black


Pseudo watermark - (sheet rotated 90 degrees clockwise)

The catalogue title appears to have been taken from the inscription at the bottom of each stamp which reads "Posterstamp Publicity Ltd London" but the wording on the logo on the rear reads "The British Poster Stamp Assn" I have seen them refered to under both titles and I just settle for "Poster Stamp" as this was the only one they produced for the coronation 1937.

The next point to be considered is the plates used for their production.

Poster Stamp - Plates

Assignment of a given impression to its possition in the sheet is a simple matter of matching the design of the stamp with the illustration of the full sheet above.

The area that has caused some debate with dealers is when I state that examples they are offering are from plate 1, which is by far the more common, and I am looking for examples from plate 2. This is usually met with the statement that they are all the same and were all printed from the same plate - hopefully the following will prove that there are in fact Two easily identifiable plate.

The following tests can be applied to all the stamps in the sheet, both horizontal and vertical format, and once you have a few examples (in the flesh) they are simple to spot ..


Plate 1

Plate 2


Plate 1

Plate 2

Plate 1 .. Larger, wider lettering
Plate 2 .. Smaller, narrower lettering
The size of the lettering is most noticiable in the description at the bottom of the label

Plate 1 .. No spurs to the letters
Plate 2 .. Spurs to the letters
This is most noticiable on the 'N' in 'CORONATION' at the top

Plate 1 .. size = 36 1/2mm x 23mm
Plate 2 .. size = 35 1/2mm x 23mm

It would also appear that during the production of these labels (from plate 1), a small flaw developed on three of the labels. These will be covered next

Poster Stamp - flaws

As already stated, I have found three flaws on this issue.

All these come from plate 1 printings ...


Coloured mark below the left of the crown


Mark below the first 'N' of 'CORONATION'


Mark between the tower and the 'A' of 'MAY'

To trace these flaws - full sheets are required and I have recorded the following ...

Plate 1 - Printed in red

A .. with no flaws on the stamps
B .. with all three flaws (as illustrated)

Plate 1 - Printed in Purple

A .. with no flaws on the stamps

Plate 1 - Printed in blue

A .. with no flaws on the stamps
B .. with all three flaws (as illustrated)

The presence of these flaws on some sheets and single impressions, and the fact that across all the printings detailed above, they are the same, shows that this was something on the plate or cylinder that was introduced at some point after printings had been made.

That concludeds the details I have regarding the poster stamp issue ... so we have (with my own numbers) ..

PS1Ra .. Plate 1 in red
PS1Rb .. Plate 1 in red with flaws on 3 stamps

PS1Ba .. Plate 1 in blue
PS1Bb .. Plate 1 in blue with flaws on 3 stamps

PS1Pa .. Plate 1 in purple

PS2Pa .. Plate 2 in purple - Only single stamps recorded by me
Sheets have been reported but these are as yet unconfirmed

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Fascinating stuff, Tallanent.

A great archive of information to have on the Board and one that will get picked up by a broader audience via google searches.

I think it deserves a nomination for new thread of the month.

Cheers
Margoz

Thank-you

I was waiting for comments earlier .. then realised that it was the middle of the night in a number of locations ..

we will now move onwards to the next issue ...
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The next two issues I will deal with are the sheets of 60. One published by Parkshaw and the other by Vallancey.

The catalogue details for both are very similar - understandable given that both are in the same format, were produced and printed by the same company and sold for the same price -

Both these sets are rated as common for single labels and as "not easy to find" for the full sheets. From experience, the Parkshaw issue turns up more often than the Vallancey - and it is this issue that I will deal with first.

With regards to the pictures of this issue, I have scanned a 'broken' sheet that I have as this (I hope) will give a better picture with the full sheet being to large to scan in one go.

Well 3am to be exact.

Interesting stuff ..... had no idea there were so many variants.
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Parkshaw's Picture Set

As already noted above, the frame of this issue is in brown.
It is noted that the centre picture on some stamps may be brown, yellow & brown, red & brown or blue & brown within the same sheet. (More on this a little later).

The sheet size of 60 is noted along with the selling price of 1/- and a comment that about 15,000,000 stamps were sold - (I will come back to this point later as well). It then notes that the stamps were engraved and printed by Harrison & Sons and issued perforated, this probably being done also by the printers.

With that all noted from the catalogue, I will now show some of the missing details that I feel make up the full set, confirm the details listed above with illustrated items, prove the existance of two plates and give (what I believe is) the correct quantity for the number sold.

Numbers sold

The number of stamps ( 150,000,000 ) quoted in the catalogue as the number sold was the quantity sold by the printers under the terms of the contract to the publishers. Thus the total number of stamps when supplied was 205,000 sheets.

As these were sold in an envelope with an information sheet, and it is known that one label from the sheet was affixed to the front of the envelope, it is possible that as many as the odd 5,000 sheets were broken up for this use.

That would explain the quiet I could hear ...



Wait till we get to the regalia set -

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Most of the details stated in the catalogue are confirmed by the printing on the envelopes that the stamps were sold in. This is a plain brown envelope (4 inches x 6 inches) printed in black on the front only.



This shows the point that was made earlier regarding sheets broken down to affix a sample label on the front of the envelope.

American or Canadian markets ...

In addition to those sold in England for 1/- per set .. it would appear that some of these were also sold either in America or Canada. I ahve been unable to find any evidence that Parkshaw's did this themselves or through an agent - or if these were brought by someone else and then re-sold.

With these issues the price of 1/- means nothing, and these envelopes are hand stamped with the value in cents as illustrated below ..



The other point to make here is regarding the size ofthe envelope and the printed sheet. For the sheet to be placed in the envelope, it had to be folded into quarters and it is this that makes complette sheets difficult to find.

Most have either plit into smaller sections or in the cases where they are still intact - there is a lot of perf seperation horizontally and verticially in the middle of the sheet.

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Information sheet

Also included as part of the package, was an information sheet.

This was printed in black on yellow/orange paper andwas folded in half to fit in the envelope. This again confirms the publishers name and address at the bottom.

Note - The black dot at teh top left corner is a printed dot and not a hole as it appears in the picture.



The reverse has no printing

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With the stamps, as already mentioned, some are printed totally in brown whilst others within the sheet have the centre in red, blue or yellow. This means that the sheet went through four printing presses, (one for each colour) and as such the alignment of the overlay colour is sometimes not possitioned correctly.

I would ask the reader to just take my word for this for the moment, as this will be confirmed at the end of this study when I will illustrate items on cover.

The sheet is illustrated in two halves (top and bottom) and I will not list all 60 designs at this time - this can be added should the information be required.

I have been unable to find any way to assign single stamps to plate 1 or plate 2 - and as such the only way to be certain of plate 2 impressions is to get the sheet that shows the plate number in the margin. (This will be shown in the next post)

The sheet illustrated here is from plate 1


Top half of the sheet


Bottom half of the sheet

The inscription at the bottom confirms the printers as detailed earlier

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Plate 2

Plate 2 is identified by the small plate number in the bottom right corner. Apart from this all the stamps and inscription are the same


Plate 2 corner block

Vallancey's Set

The details in the catalogue are basicly the same as for the Parkshaw set with the exception that it does not give a total figure for the stamps.

I have never seen an envelope or information insert for this issue, and apart from some single copies, have only one unbroken sheet which I am anable to scan due to size.

The layout of the sheet and marginal inscription are teh same as for plate 1 of the Parkshaw set - however, being produced by the same printers, I would guess that there is a plate 2 still waiting to be found / recorded.

I will (if required) list the design details for this later ..

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Having now been at this for about 12 hours - I will leave this to be viewed and await any comments on the content.

From the catalogue listing we are left with the Harrison's Regalia Set but in addition there is another un-recorded label which will be added in and this will be followed by some covers that show various uses and tie up the few points mentioned above.

I hope that I have not bored the reader to much - and with a little bit of luck those with some of these items can now assign them correctly and add a page or two of some colour to the GB coronation stamp as issued by the Post Office.

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I'd bet they were sold here too, as many junior type collections formed here have some or all in them.

Have never looked at the outer envelopes tho, which one occasionally sees!

Glen

Great thread Allan

A great work to complement your Coronation Covers work, which now resides on my computer!

I note that the instruction "Do not affix to front of envelope" wasn't always followed!

_________________
Always looking for KGV British Commonwealth, mint, used, covers, anything

Glen ... good point.
I had not considered the Australian market.

This is why open information is so good - as we all get tunnel vision from time to time and forget to look at other options

One thing I have never done is look at the exchange rate (Australia, Canada and the USA) as it may be possible to narrow the options that way.

Sherro

Glad you like it and nice to know that the Coronation covers is still of use - another area that need updating...

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As I said .. we are now left with the Harrison's Regalia set, and unrecorded label and some covers - so having had a little rest - I will now try and cover these and finish this little study.

The un-recorded label (this is as far as I am aware - as I have not been able to find any reference to it) was part of the "Sunday is Special" campaign that was around in 1936 - 1937

The only information I can give on this is what is seen from the illustration below and my stock of these items (which comprises one other single stamp)....

Design .. see the illustration below
Perforation .. line perf
Printed in sheets - size unknown as this copy has margins top and left



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We now come to the Harrison's Regalia Set issued in sheets of 12.

Looking at the catalogue this would appear to be an easy issue to assign, however, it can get a little more involved than would appear to be the case at first sight.

To start I will quote the catalogue and then I will go into greater detail ...



A few points here for confirmation ..

produced by Harrison's - this is confirmed by the firms name at the bottom of the labels. (see the large illustration at the start of this thread)

The fact that these stamps were produced for Albert Harris and designed by T A Chaplin was confirmed in a phone call to Harrison's archives but they had no details on the numbers printed. They did state that they thought that the plate would have been larger than one sheet, due to the size of their machines and I will come to this later.

With regards to the price - I have found no evidence that these were sold as single sheets (although this is possible) - but can confirm the set price of 6/-

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Allan,

Odd this one is so scarce, and you seem to have surely the best group of these out there!

I know of one of these on cover to INDIA April 1937, with GB KV8 heads franking, to pay postage, and with this on reverse.

Let me know if this kind of thing is of interest, and I'll get a scan organised.

Glen

Glen ...

Yes please ...

If you could scan the front and back (and post the details to this thread just so the details are all recorded in one place) that would be great

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The Harrison's Regalaia Set consists of an envelope (two variations), and information insert card, (two variations) and sheets of 12 labels printed in the six colours already noted.

I will deal with these in this order and when we get to the sheets of stamps I intend to show that there are at least 36 variations of the sheets and that some of the labels can be assign to their correct plates from single copies.

The Envelopes

The envelopes that the stamps and the card were sold in are standard brown printed on the front in black. these are all 220mm x 141mm.

The text on the front confirms the colours produced and the price per set as noted above.

Regulations at the time where that "labels" such as these coronation types, were not to be used on the fronts of letters going through the post, hence the note on the Parkshaw's envelope illustrated earlier.

it would appear that at some time after these sets had been on sale, it was required to state this on the envelope and this was done by a three line hand-stamp. I would guess that this happened very late in the sale of the sets as most envelopes I have seen do not have this addition.


The envelope for the set of labels
Confirms price, colours and the insert card


Part envelope with the additional hand stamp

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The Folder as it is called on the envelope, is a piece of folded white card printed on one side only. The card is 202mm x 254mm (or 202 x 127 when folded).

There are two variations of the card, however, as the differences are small I will show only what I call type 1 and describe the three points that allow type 2 to be spotted.

Both these cards seem to turn up in equal numbers..


The basic information card

Type 2 Card

The identification of the type 2 information card is done by three small errors that appear to be constant. These are ..

1 .. Left side - ST. EDWARD'S CROWN
On the first line of text, the letter 'f' is missing from 'rim or circle of'

2 .. Right side - THE SWORD OF STATE
The word 'gold' at the end of the first line has the bottom of the letters 'gol' missing

3 .. Right side - THE ROYAL SCEPTRE
On the last line of text, the comma is missing after 'King's'

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I will ask old Harry(GOMC2) when I next see him. He's into all things Cinderella. That might not be until next Monday, as I am going away on Friday and will miss the GOMC meeting.

_________________
Waroff49

The last chapter of the Never_Ending Story is being written.

waroff49 .. many thanks.

The more information the better - and anything that I can fit into the collection that he wants to part with - I am sure something can be agreed upon.

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We now come to the sheets of 12 stamps ..

Just before we get onto these, I would like to point out that the sheets within the envelope (full set at 6/-) were supplied in a plastic sleeve. These were very flimsy and thankfully they all fell apart most were discarded as I have no doubt that they would have damged the stamps over time. A single plastic held all 6 sheets.

As such these are quite scarce but of no real intrest unless (as collectors do) we want to show all the items.

First we need to look at the full sheet ..


Sheet of 12 designs

From this example we can see that the left and top margins are imperforate (single hole extention to the left), and that the sheets were comb perforated.

As stated earlier, Harrison's had said that they believed the plate for the production would have been larger than a single sheet, and this got me looking at other items in my collection as well as getting on long term loan items from other collectors.

This revealed that there were variations in the ways that the margins were perforated as follows ..

1 .. imperf top and left (as illustrated)
2 .. imperf top and right
3 .. imperf left only
4 .. imperf right only

This gave the impression straight away that the plate for the printing of these labels was in fact the size to hold six sheets and that the were printed, perforated and then seperated. This is commonly known as "on the web" where the printed sheets go from one process to the nest and so on.

It should be noted that it was possible that the plate size was only 4 sheets, however, I felt that 6 was more likely and this was to be proved right as will be shown ..

With this information to show the plate layout, the assignment of the top 2 sheets was simple due to them having at imperforate margins on two sides, the bottom of the plate would need a little more sorting out as these were imperf on the left or right only

To achive this a large number of sheets were examined to confirm the details that follow, and charts were drawn up to log all the variations.

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The first task is to assign each impression within each sheet on the printed plate and to do this I have drawn up a grid to show the layout of the plate, with each sheet lettered from A to F.

Within each sheet the designs of the impressions are the same, so these are numbered 1 to 12 (shown here on sheet C).

In this way impression C1 - is St. Edward's Crown and
impression A1 would be the same design but from the sheet above in the plate.



The designs (numbered 1 to 12) are ...

1 .. St Edward's Crown
2 .. The Coronation Ring
3 .. The King's Orb
4 .. The Ampulla
5 .. St George's Spurs
6 .. The Imperial State Crown
7 .. Curtana or Sword of Mercy
8 .. St Edward's Staff
9 .. Sword of State
10 .. King's Sceptre with the Dove
11 .. Anointing Spoon
12 .. King's Royal Sceptre

With this information - a simple letter and number combination allows any label to be assigned to its possition on the plate - or in the case of full sheets, for any label within the sheet to be referenced.

This may appear to be a little pointless, but as I was setting about trying to prove that there were 6 sheets in the plate and to be able to identify them, this was an essential first step.

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The next task was to check every sheet that I had access to and list the variations within a similar grid to that used before.

The assignment of sheets "C and E" and "D and F" may actually have been the other way around - but in the absence of un-cut pieces (due to the production method) and no information available from the printers, the assignment of the sheets on the plate will have to stand untill either new information comes to light from Harrison's archives (which I think is unlikely given the amount of baggering I did getting them to check things) or from another collector.

The illustration below shows the possitions of the flaws within the plate and these are then listed below...



A .. White break in the label and a small dot below the base of the crown
B .. Spot by ring (right side)
C .. Small line extension at the base (left side) (often faint)
D .. Dot after 'HARRISONS' - (semi-constant)
E .. Small dot in the top left corner margin
F .. Spot inside spur
G .. Small mark below base frame
H .. Dot in handle of sword
I .. Dot to right of ball on staff
J .. Dot below left handle of sword
K .. Spot to right of sword top
L .. Spot to right side of the centre picture
M .. Small dot at the base of the label (right side)
N .. Small line extension at the top (left side)
O .. Small line extension at the base (left side)
P .. break in the base line below bottom scroll
Q .. Dot to left of 'H' of 'HARRISONS'
R .. Dot in left margin - top
S .. Small dot under orb - right side
T .. White spot to right of floral pillar - right side
U .. Dot below right side of spoon
V .. Dot to left of handle on sword
W .. Dot below 'ON' of 'SONS' at the base of the label
X .. 2 dots to the right of the spurs

I am aware that variety X is not shown on the sheet and this is as I have not been able to assign it as yet. On the Black printing this is very faint.

With regards to all the variations listed, it should be noted that a number are faint and as such may not always be visible on certain colour printings.

I will now scan the examples where the flaws show, as this will enable collectors to see the point in question rather than guessing from my written descriptions. (and after all this is a visual hobby).

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For the flaws that appear on the Harrison's Regalia Set - as noted above.

The design of the stamps can be seen on the illustration of the full sheet shown earlier and for this reason I will show only enlargements of the area in question with the flaw pointed out.

These will be dealt with one sheet at a time (starting with sheet A) and they are numbers as per my system above - thus A3 is the King's Orb on sheet A in the plate.

Reference to the list of flaws can been seen in the table above and the letter indications used will not be repaeted in this section.

Sheet A

A3

Extension of the base line to the left

A7

Dot in the handle of the sword

A10

Spot to right side of centre picture

A12

An extension of the base frame line to the left
This is often very faint and in many cases not visible
In cases where it can be seen - it is always fainter than that shown on A3

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Sheet B

B2


Spot by ring - right side

B5


Spot inside spur

B8


Dot to right side of ball on staff

B9


Spot to right of sword top

B9 is often faint or not visible. This should therefore be considered semi-constant

B10 - Two flaws on this impression


Spot to right side of centre picture


Dot to left of the 'H' of 'HARRISON'

The dot to the left of the 'H' is very small and often faint but appears to be constant.

B12


break in base line below bottom scroll

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Sheet C

C4


Small dot in top left corner margin

C6


Small mark below base frame

C9


Dot above left handle of sword

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Sheet D

D1


Dot in left margin at the top

D3


Small dot under Orb - right side

The small dot under the orb is very small and faint. When it is seen it can appear as a small bulge on the base line of the orb. The illustration shows the area where this appears

D6


White spot to right of floral pillar
(Right side)

D11


Dot below right side of spoon

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Sheet E

E1


Small line extension at the top - left side

As illustrated, this sometimes appears as a dot and not joined to the frame line

E3


Small dot after 'HARRISON'

This is very small and faint. The illustration shows where it appears

E4

Small dot in the top left corner margin
See illustration C4 above

E6

Small mark below base frame
See illustration CC above

E10


Small dot at base of label - right side

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Sheet F

I do not have a full sheet from this possition on the plate (hint) but the details listed above under the variations were taken from sheets loaned to me whilst working on this project.

Some of the variations appear on other sheets as well so that 6 of the 10 listed for this sheet are already shown above ..

F2 - same as B2
F3 - same as D3
F5 - same as B5
F7 - appears on this sheet only
F8 - same as B8
F9 - two flaws on this impression
..... one is the same as B9
..... the other appears on this sheet only

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F10 - same as B10
F11 - appears on this sheet only
F12 - appears on this sheet only

So ... from a catalogue listing of 6 basic sheets, and the fact that we can prove that there are 6 sheets to the plate, a collection of these labels alone could go to 36 sheets.

in addition there are another 12 sheets, (two plate possitions each in 6 colours) that could be added should you wish, and these I will now try and explain.

Variations for sheets A and B

As already noted, these labels were printed on the web. They were printed, then perforated then split into single sheets.

The perforating was done by a comb extending the full width of the printed sheet (two sheets as issued), and it is this that gives us the perforated through left or right margin that aid in the assignment of the sheets to their possition on the plate.

The seperation of the printe sheets in to single sheets was done almost centrally in the margins between the sheet impressions. In general this is between 15mm and 17mm from the top fram line of the top impression of the stamps. The exception to this appears to be when seperation was made between sheets E and F and what would be the start of the next plate impression - sheets A and B.

In this case most examps show a top margin of 15mm and thus, as there was also a break in the perforating at this point, the top and one side margin on these sheets are imperforate (except for the single hole extension as already noted).

In some case however, it would appear that the cut was made slightly higher (about 16mm instead of 15mm) and this leaves a trace of the perforating holes from the previous impressions on the web.

I know this may be considered a little over the top but it is included here for completenes


Sheet B showing the extra perfs at the top

So with these two extras (as the same variation happens on sheet A) there are a possible 48 sheets that can be placed in a collection.

This now concludes the details I have on these labels and I will now add a few covers to illustrate some of the points made in previous posts and to tie up the remaing loose-ends that I left

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As was noted on the fronts of the envelopes that some of these labels were issued in, the labels were not to be used on the front (address side) of letters. However I am certain that some people used the labels on the left side of the envelope to create their own pictorial cover.

This situation seems to explain covers that are encountered like this, however, it must be remembered that as plain Coronation First Day Covers and these Coronation labels are cheap, it would be very easy to add one to the other.

So here is a little reminder - They may look nice but you cant be sure when the label was added


Poster Stamp label on cover

Labels on cover, placed near the stamps that have part of the cancellation confirming its use at the time do turn up, but "philatelic" covers seem to be less common than one would expect given the large number of labels produced.


Poster Stamp and Parkshaw label tied on cover
Cancelled at Greenford, West London
13 May 1937

Earlier, when dealing with the Parkshaw issue, I mentioned the misplacement of the overlay colours applied to the sheets and said that I would illustrate this at this time.

There are a number of slight misplacements, either up, down, left or right, but as with all things philatelic, the more drastic the better ...


Drastic downward shift of the overlay colour

The shift to the right on the vertical format stamps is due to
the way they appeared in the full sheet (see above)

To finish of we again have the Parkshaw issue ...

This time it is a printed enlargement of one of the designs from the sheet printed in brown on the front of an envelope


used on the first day of issue - 13 May 1937

This now is all the details I have on these Coronation labels.

I hope the expanded information will not only serve as an extension to any catalogues you may be using but also show that even with cheap cinderella items there is a vast scope for study and expansion.

As a final note I should state that all this research was done in the early 1990's and although I have shared snippets with other collectors, this is the first time it has been published in full anywhere

I hope the reader has not been bored to much and would like to say thank you for this board and the chance to share this information with a couple of thousand colectors worldwide.

ALLAN.

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Additional information

I had a visit this evening from a postcard dealer friend of mine who knows the sort of things I like to add into my collection.

After a few beers and catching up on whats been happening, just as he was leaving he dropped an envelope on the table and told me that this was part payment towards what he owed me - (from mixed lots I give him the option on any cards I can not use).

In with this lot were some of these labels - and although only a few items they do expand the information a little on whats already here.

So below is some new details on the Parkshaw set and the Poster Stamp issue ..

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