REGIONALS

3) The Return of Photogravure

Litho (Questa)	Photo (Walsall)

April 1997 saw the printing of the regionals transfered from The House of Questa to Walsall Security Printers. Until now, Walsall had used the lithograpy process for printingBritish definatives. However, as part of a new policy of The Post Office for consistancy between printers, the new stamps were to be printed in photogravure, a standard that would be addopted by all printers. In addition, a new type of photogravure was used in which the images were computer generated and etched. This new process gives brighter very finely detailed images.
Follow this link to see a larger comparison[65K].

Wales has it own national language, although English is also spoken. A Welsh Language Act had been which required markings in both languages. Since the Welsh equivalent of "Pence" began with a 'C'it was not feasable to fit both p and c on the stamp and hence the letters were dropped completely from the Welsh issues.

Error (upper) verses normal (lower)		Block illustrating position of error

Part of the early print run of the Welsh 20(p) value was made with a damaged or misaligned perforator. This gave rise to a perforation error on the stamps throughout the left most column of the sheet, whose stamps appeared to have an extra perforator pin. This also had the effect of widening the affected stamp, a side effect being the stamp appearing with the design shifted to the right.

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