GB: King George V Definitives 1910-1936

Beryllium Guy   I never know what might catch my eye asnd pique my interest!

Color shades from SG Specialized Stamp Catalogue, Vol 2 King Edward VII to King George VI !st edition (1967), so it is quite possible they have been consolidated

I was mistaken, there are only 9 shades (small print!)


Orange-yellow (1912
Reddish orange (1913)
Deep reddish orange (1916)
Pale Orange
Orange
Brown-orange (1921)
Bright orange
Deep bright orange
Intense bright orange (fugitive ink and shows through back of stamp)

i'll try the peroxide bath and report back

Well, thanks for being willing to try that little test, Stan (stainlessb).  Frankly, I am surprised that your copy still seems to be resolutely brown with only the smallest hint of orange in a couple of areas.  Hmmm.... I felt that it was very likely sulphurized, but if it had been, the hydrogen peroxide bath should have brought out some of the orange.

It's late here now, but I will take a look through my KGV holdings and see if I can find anything similar to yours.  My recollection is that all of mine are clearly some shade of orange, but I will have a look in case I missed one.  I will report back in a day or so.

In the meantime, hey Alex (vikingeck) or Graham (thegubman) or Michael (Londonbus1) or Ryan.... any thoughts about this?

Please see the images below. First row are random 2d's from an album not sorted by watermark, third row royal cypher and last row block cypher. I really hate getting drawn into discussions about colour. Is it bright orange or yellow chrome! I have added the Stanley Gibbons colour key to show the different shades, this does not include the orange red or red orange, or buff or ochre.

I was an industrial chemist for 30 years and often my colleagues would comment on the colour of my reactions. I was doing some copper catalysed chemistry and removal of the copper was done by aqueous acid washes. These would typically be green in colour. One colleague had a particularly annoying habit of telling me about the green colour, every day. So much so that I took in my SG colour key and waited for the inevitable to happen, and she said oh it's green again. I said no it is emerald green and showed her the colour key up against the separating funnel. She actually agreed and thankfully never commented again about the colour. Conversely I used to organise a colleagues vials containing products in order of blackness (black is typically not a good colour for a chemist) and said that one is blackish brown and should be at the front and not next to the brownish black one. Colour to me is very subjective, what I may call olive green someone may see as amber. So it is best done alongside a group of stamps, some with defined colour and the colour key for back up. Cheers Graham

Well, I did find some 2-pence KGV issues of my own, and I will make an attempt at scanning and posting them tomorrow.  It is late here now, so this will be my last post for tonight.

Thanks for your additional posts, Stan (stainlessb), but I will say that all of your stamps look brown to me.  I can hardly see any orange in them at all.  When looking at my own, they all look orange to me, with almost no brown.

Like Graham (thegubman), I also generally hesitate to get involved in discussions about color varieties, because it all seems so very subjective and exceedingly difficult to make comparisons, unless one has all of the actual stamps in hand at the same time.  Trying to compare colors from scans that have been generated on different equipment, with different settings, and then viewed on different displays, seems problematic at best.

Stan, as all of your stamps look decidedly brown to me, I am just going to figure that it must be something to do with my display of your scan.  None of my copies look anywhere near as brown as yours, at least to me.  Anyway, I will post my examples tomorrow, but I am not optimistic that it will tell us much.

here, using the color swatch (?)  from Stanley Gibbons Colour Key (and I bought this new about 18 or so months ago from Stanley Gibbons), below is the closets to "Bright orange" out of the stamps I have. i tried to take out most of the perf/black border. On my =scanner the brightness for the 3 primary colors are each 1.00



yet this image above is much "darker" (nothing I would call "bright" ) and there is more bleed in the white margins  on the SG key.....
below is a screen shot from my computer's monitor- ( I have a Apple Retina and an ASUS and there is a slight difference in color between  monitor I views on [ for the record- this image came formthe Apple Retina}...)with the above in the background and the scanned image (on the scanner)... I certainly have no explanation- maybe  I should start taking screen shots....


and here's the other monitor (this time side by side) The ASUS- the color could be due to influence of room lighting- monitors are not parallel, more like an open book with pages not completely flat/// or it could be the monitor

This reminds me a lot of the many shades of the first US Airmail Scott C1. Few actual shades but lots of color variations due to oxidation.
Rob

vikingeck
I agree 100% !! Very good résumé  .....and there are multiple color charts for other Countries
René

Stan, I got mixed up (did not understand well) with your statement - for me,  At times, I do see same color on my "live stamp" a compared to the screen
René

Admin no, the single image with colour key is "off, but the screen shots from my iPhone shows more accurately my monitor with the image, or my monitor with the scanner image as compared to the single image with color key. WERT posted two comparisons, although it is the same stamp, just from different images uploaded

Yet, the screen shots were also uploaded and look like what I "see" from my desk (seem more accurate)

very strange...

I figure this is as good a thread as any for this partial booklet from 1924. It is rather shabby but still intact with a some stamps attached including the front sheet tabs. I believe the booklet number is 70. Even with the condition I have kept it together thinking it has more interest and value this way rather than individual stamps. Possibly a member has a catalogue that identifies which booklets are scarce. 

Paul, that's very heavily inked. I suspect that it is actually F.S. for Foreign Section (it was previously F.B. for Foreign Branch) and would be used for printed matter sent abroad.

Daniel

That is correct but for that it was released in September 1921.

There are a couple of distinguishing features:

1. The head is set lower on the original die (I). There are four lines in the oval above the King's Head on die I and three in die II. The neck of the King is much closer to oval on die I than on die II.
2. The central frame line in the top corners is close to the inner frame line on die I. In die II, the central frame line is almost halfway between the inner and outer framelines.
3. The coloured line above 'TWO PENCE' is much stronger on die I than it is on die II. As a result, the white frame line above 'TWO PENCE' is thicker on die II than on die I.


Die I (left) and die II (right)

The first feature can always be confirmed on a single example. Once you are familiar with the second feature, you will see at once which die the stamp is from.

Another KGV on cover, this time a 6d purple (sg385/426a) sent in August 1937 from Arundel, Sussex to an RAF base in Selatar, Singapore.

Last KGV cover for now, this one has a 1d red 'Downey Head' (sg341/345/350 - a previous owner has determined 341, presumably by the date).
It travelled in April 1912 from London to Brighton, and includes a cute (and mostly readable) letter with some postal interest in the first paragraph:

"I sent you a letter yesterday but suppose it must have caught a later post than usual. I also sent you a loaf of black bread. Have you got it because I did not register it, I thought it was not worth the 2d extra."