OS PERFINS - THE MISSING HOLE in O VARIETY

[Ross Ewington]

I presently have a horizontal pair of ½d Pictorials, both stamps with both stamps having the
"missing hole in O" variety. I sold another pair a couple of years ago that I will also post an
image of to this topic as soon as I can find it.

z1927.jpg (192.89 KiB) Viewed 14052 times

The stamp is the sideways V over Crown watermarked issue.

I think that I have seen this perfin variety on most values of the Pictorial Series .... except
the 2½d of course as stock would have been "long gone" when OS perfins were introduced
in 1904.

This is the ideal forum to record the perfin variety and the stamps on which it appears.
Please post any images you may have to this topic.

Here's another one, this time on the 5d value

[Geoff Dane]

The 4d stamp is TAS watermark and the others are V over crown. The second penny I have is P11. The top 1/2 d stamp is missing the 4 o'clock pin but not so the bottom stamp.

[Jerry Weirich]

Below is a scan of the only 1/2d litho OS sideways stamp I have ever seen. The OS sideways stamps were the first OS punctures on the halfpenny lithos (and 2d lithos) and not many were made. I would like to know if others have examples and if it exists with the missing pin variety. I would like to plate all examples for a major study being done on the OS punctures. Please post your scans.

[Ross Ewington]

I had forgotten that I once handled a block of four of the ½d Pictorial (the top units with the "missing hole" variety)
until I came across this image hidden away the the darker reaches of my computer while looking for "something else" earlier today .
[attachment=0]os missing hole.jpg[/attachment]

I also came across this image of an additional horiz. pair but I can't recall where I obtained it.
[attachment=1]½d OS pair.jpg[/attachment]

[wilbaer]

I wanted to post a few scans that we received for our ongoing project on Official State Perfins, Reproduced here with permission from the National Philatelic Collection, Australia Post, which will give you all an exact location of the missing pin variety in the perf OS on the Tasmanian Pictorials. As you will see, the missing pin came from one of the 10 dies that were used to puncture the OS pictorials and led to a single row per sheet being punched with the missing pin. From these examples, the 3d and 5d sheets/blocks both had these missing pin varieties, but the 4d sheet/block does not ! This creates a few scenarios :

1. There were two different machines in use at this time in Melbourne for puncturing OS pictorials. We are currently looking into this scenario closely, as we have evidence, we believe, that the normal 10 die steel bar that was used in Melbourne was broken down into pieces for some reason (possibly to puncture the De La Rue stamps of Tasmania and other states, but this needs closer analysis and we hope to publish an article in the PCNZA bulletin in the near future - have a close look at the positioning of some of the OS's in the sheets - they are very irregular !).
2. The missing pin on the die was there from the outset when the process of puncturing started, but was replaced once the fault in the die was seen
3. The die started out life complete, but broke at some stage over the years and ended up in this broken state when puncturing OS officials
4. The die started out life complete, but broke at some stage over the years but was later mended and ended up as a complete OS.

It would be interesting to hear from you all on this post with your thoughts on these scans and the scenarios above - I hope it helps shed some light into how and where this missing pin variety occurred. Scans are below, all reproduced here with permission from the National Philatelic Collection, Australia Post.

3d perf os sheet with missing hole row.JPG (178.15 KiB) Viewed 12864 times

4d perf os sheet with no missing hole row.JPG (110.8 KiB) Viewed 12864 times

5d perf os sheet with missing hole row.JPG (151.94 KiB) Viewed 12864 times

[wilbaer]

Here are a couple more closeup scans, again reproduced here with permission from the National Philatelic Collection, Australia Post :

3d perf os sheet with missing hole row closeup.JPG (411.77 KiB) Viewed 12862 times

5d perf os sheet with missing hole row closeup.JPG (340.01 KiB) Viewed 12862 times

[Jerry Weirich]

I have been studying these stamps for some time and I think your first and second scenarios (with the missing pin as the original state) are the most probable. I did a short article on the missing pin variety in 2011 for the journal of the Society for Australiasian Specialists/Oceania. At that time, I theorized that the missing pin variety was the original state of the perforator for the horizontally oriented OS stamps. Since 2011, I still have not found any normal OS stamps (i.e., with pins complete) dated prior to the dates on missing pin variety stamps. It only takes finding one to make scenarios 3 or 4 the most probable, but I have not seen it. I also agree that there were more than one perforator machines used.

I am not a member of the PCNZA so when you do publish, please let us know your conclusions. Thanks, Jerry

[wilbaer]

Good to hear your thoughts, Jerry - many thanks. We think the first 2 scenarios are most likely as well, but would be very interested to read your article. Myself and David Coath, the President of the PCNZA, are currently in the throes of analysing closely the machines that were used in Melbourne to puncture the various OS States perfins during that time and hope to publish an article on our thoughts in the next PCNZA bulletin, time permitting. concentrating on the differences of the die strikes between the machines, particularly on the De La Rue issues compared to the non De La Rue issues.

It seems the DLR issues created dramas not only for the perforating machines at the time, but also for the official puncturing of the OS issues. We have evidence so far that the 10 OS dies on one machine had a 3-4-3 formation judging by the strikes on sheets and blocks we have seen (compared to the normal complete 10-die setup that was used for other issues in Melbourne,such as the Victorian 1d Red of the era, where we have a complete sheet of OS for comparison), but have no firm documentation from any historical source regarding this, so if anyone has come across this, we would love to hear from you. It is clear that two machines existed from all these differing strikes though.

David wrote the first stage of this analysis of the OS Type F (Melbourne OS) in the last bulletin, so if anyone wants to have a read of it, please let me know and we can hopefully organise to get it to you via email or otherwise.

[wilbaer]

Dear All,

Here is the article from the last PCNZA bulletin on the Melbourne OS Type F for you to view - comments most welcome, naturally.

Cheers
Jerry A.

PCNZA Melbourne OS Type F article Oct 18 pdf.pdf

(2.83 MiB) Downloaded 721 times

[Jerry Weirich]

Here is the 2011 article in The Informer, journal of the Society of Australasian Specialists/Oceania.

Vol75Number2pp1-4.pdf

(335.2 KiB) Downloaded 596 times