A beginners guide to sorting the Line Engraved Postage Stamps of Great Britain

      The following has been compiled by Allan Oliver who will be happy to talk about the area covered at one of the meetings

      There are a number of things to consider when first trying to sort the line engraved postage stamp from the reign of Queen Victoria and these include watermark, alphabet types and perforation size. As all this can get very involved, let me firstly state that this guide will not allow you to plate every stamp you encounter, rather its intention is to allow you to assign the stamps to the major groups which will them require further study should you so desire.

      I have assumed for the purpose of this guide that the readers enthusiasm exceeds his technical knowledge and that he has a selection of stamps to sort. This last point, although it may seem obvious, is important, as only by repeating the process of classification do we learn how to assign these stamps to their correct groups.

      Any technical terms used in this article are fully explained as the users works through the process .... so before you decide that all this is already getting to complicated lets get started on assigning your stamps into their correct groups

      The first thing you need to do is sort out the basic designs. There are five basic types and you need to set all these into seperate piles as follows

Penny Blacks	Penny Reds
Two Pence Blues	Half-Penny Reds
Three-Half Pence Reds	The five basic groups

      Congratulations - You have now completed the first stage of assigning your stamps into their correct groups

      The next stage is to take each group and sort them into sub groups. For this we will work on the easiest groups first to ease you into the key points to look for ...

Three Half Pence Red

One of the easiest stamps to assign This value was only printed from two plates, as follows Plate 1 - no plate number appears in the design Plate 3 - a small figure 3 appears as indicated on the picture to the left

     Next the small halfpenny stamps, often referred to as bantams

half Penny Bantams

Once again, the plate number appears in the design, in the position indicated on the illustration to the left. the only problem here is that they are often covered by the cancellation due to the small size of the stamp

     Now things start to get a little more involved, but again we will start with the easiest group first, the Two Pence Blues. The first stage is to seperate these into three groups as follows ...

Imperforate No white lines

Imperforate With white lines added

Perforated

      Each of these groups will now be dealt with in order ...

Imperforate No white lines	These stamps are from the first two plates made for production Any example must be from either plate 1 or plate 2
Imperforate With white lines added	These stamps are from the 1841 issue when they were printed in more fugitive inks, Hence the addition of the white lines, so that the different printings could be instantly identified These stamps must be from either plate 3 or plate 4
Perforated	These fall into a further two groups .. Those with stars in the top corner squares and those with check letters in te top corner squares The stamps with stars must be from plates 4, 5 or 6 Those with check letters have the plate number in the design in the possition indicated on the illustration to the left

      For the purpose of this guide I will again only deal with major groups that the beginner will be able to distinguish

      Once again we need to sort our original pile as follows ...

Imperforate Stars in the top corner squares	These are the earliest printing of the red stamps There are a vast number of plates and variations to consider but an easy form of identification is the postmark That shown at the left is known as a Maltese cross and on these stamps generally indicated plates 1 to 45. Other postmarks, such as that shown on the stamp below indicate later plates
Perforated Stars in the top corner squares	Again there are a vast number of plates and other variations in this group but generally these date from February 1854 to April 1864 when the following group were issued
Perforated Check letters in the top corner squares	This group, (the pate number series), are a simple matter of reading the plate number which is incorperated into the design at the possitions as indicated on the illustration to the left

      Eleven basic plates were used for their production, with plate 1 undergoing a complette restoration, and being reconised as two seperate plates, known as 1A and 1B. A number of the other plates were also repaired at various times, which means that some letterings can be found in later states.

      Without geting into the finer details of plating, the Maltese cross postmark gives some clues. In red it will generally indicate an early plate, (1 to 7 or 8), whilst the same cancellation in black will almost certainly mean a later plate, (8 to 11). As can be seen there is a grey area in the middle of the plate range and these can be found with both coloured postmarks, as they were the plates in circulation at the change over from black to red for the cancellations

      I hope this very basic introduction proves useful to all our members and visitors