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Essay, Black Print, Reprint and Printer’s Waste
Just as unseparated sheets of stamps reached the stamp market by legal and illegal means, gutter pairs of stamps appeared. Other materials from printers, including unfinished stamps and designs also found their way into philatelists’ hands.
The first Russian stamps were issued in 1858. Before the Russian postal administration had the stamps printed, it had a number of designs prepared and sent in for consideration. These samples served as the basis for the drawing of the definitive design of Russia’s first stamps. A part of these designs came into the hands of philatelists and, although they do not have a value printed on them, they are highly prized by specialized collectors.
During the printing preparation, a number of tests are carried out. The stamp design is tested in the actual size of the future stamp to see what it is going to look like reduced. Such prints are often changed and corrected before the final design is adopted. These examples are called essays. Different types of paper and different colours are tested. All these trial prints although they are actually unfinished stamps are of great interest to specialized collectors who follow the details of the origin and production of postage stamps.
Black prints are auxiliary control prints taken from individual blocks. Their purpose is to discover, before the printing starts, whether there are any errors in the design. The Austrian GPO sends out press releases with detailed descriptions of the new stamps and what they commemorate. Black prints of the stamps are stuck, as samples, on these press releases.
As soon as philately became popular and started spreading, old stamps were in great demand. It became evident that some stamps were in very short supply and, therefore, rare. Some postal administrations used the old printing plates and had old stamps reprinted many years after their original issue. The design is exactly the same but the paper and the composition of inks is very often different due to the passage of time. These reprints can be distinguished from the originals through such features. They could not be used for postage and were printed specifically for collectors.
Printer’s waste may consist of faulty sheets of paper (torn or folded) with faulty print, displaced second colour printing, displaced print, irregularly perforated sheets, incorrectly cut sheets or imperfect gumming. When the printers are setting their machines and testing the depths of colours or the proper positioning of the plate in the printing press, they use auxiliary material. They take the next best available sheet of paper, frequently waste from the previous printing of stamps, paper of different thickness and quality. On such waste all sorts of stamps are printed in different colours, one across the other. Printer’s waste may be of interest to some collectors but only as a subject of lesser importance, not generally as study material.
Very strict control is exercised in every stamp printing plant. All imperfect products discovered are eliminated and normally destroyed.
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