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3) Second Itaglio Issues

£1.50 Value [4K]£2 Value [4K]£3 Value [4K]£5 Value [4K]

These issues marked a return to the use of the Machin design for the high values after an 11 year break in which the high value stamps had been served by the 1988 Castles issues. They were release [WHEN?] and printed by Enschedé.

In (when?) the printing contract was transfered to the printer De La Rue. When the 1988 castles had changed printer, the master dies had been the property of the first printer, which meant that the new printer had to engrave a completely new master die. The Post Office learnt from this and had taken responsibility for the master die for these Machin high values. Therefor the were able to simply transfer the master die to the new printer.

The master die was used to produce dies for each value, with the values being engraved seperately. Thus De La Rue still had to engrave the value tablets and it is via these that the two printers can be differentiated, although this requires a good magnifying glass..

£1.50 Ensched&eacute; [2K] £1.50 region [2K] £1.50 De La Rue [2K]   £2 Ensched&eacute; [2K] £2 region [2K] £2 De La Rue [2K]
Enschedé   De La Rue   Enschedé   De La Rue
£3 Ensched&eacute; [2K] £3 region [2K] £3 De La Rue [2K]   £5 Ensched&eacute; [2K] £5 region [2K] £5 De La Rue [2K]
Enschedé   De La Rue   Enschedé   De La Rue
£1.50 The Enschedé printings have an additional thin white line to the right of the numeral '1'.
£2 The Enschedé printings show a thick line running the complete length of the base of the numeral '2'. In the De La Rue printings, the line is thinner and is broken.
£3 The Enschedé printings show an additional scratch in the lower arc of the figure '3'
£5 The Enschedé printings show additional white dots in the upper most arc of the '£' symbol.

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12th March 2002