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I have attached a snippet from the latest Australian Stamps Professionals ( Vol 5 Issue 7 ) that I received today. "Approved by John leah"

There is a great article on the British New Guinea Lakatoi Cross watermark varieties, the late Peter Troy identified that that the sheet makers plate was made up of a group of 9 panes rather than the 6 panes stated by Croaker.

He was able to identify the nine pane master sheet by the discovery of several new X Cross watermark printers guides hidden among the rosettes on the back of the sheets.

I have attached a copy of the sheet layout and cross watermark identity positions for the horizontal watermark, please be aware that the vertical watermark is different in its positonal placings.



If any of the collectors out there find that they have any, can you please contact me or send scans to my E-Mail on Stampboards.

Cheers Robbo

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I am a Collector of all British New Guinea, Papua and TP&NG. Would love to talk to fellow collectors of same. Robbo

Robbo, if I get a chance tomorrow I'll go through what I have and post them up here. I'll also email you high res scans.

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Tony

Great thanks' Tony

I have 5 myself, 3 position B, 1 Position C and 1 Position A.

What I am looking for is if the Watermarks finish's at the edge of the salvage if any available or if the watermarks continue through the salvage.

This will be impossible to tell if its just the stamp yet I would still be very interested in cataloguing how many of each type might be in the hands of members, with or without salvage.

Either watermark info required.

Cheers Robbo

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I am a Collector of all British New Guinea, Papua and TP&NG. Would love to talk to fellow collectors of same. Robbo

Here are a couple of my examples, hope they come up visable.

Type B Back of stamp



Type B front of stamp



Type C back of stamp colour adjusted to show cross



Type C front of stamp



Cheers Robbo

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I am a Collector of all British New Guinea, Papua and TP&NG. Would love to talk to fellow collectors of same. Robbo

Robbo, load them up at 800 x 600 pixels (maximum), they show up best at that size

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Tony

Lets see if these come out better that the first ones, fingers crossed.
(pardon the pun).

1d Vertical


2/6 Vertical


2d Vertical, top of strip is position 3


Cheers Robbo

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I am a Collector of all British New Guinea, Papua and TP&NG. Would love to talk to fellow collectors of same. Robbo

By definition watermarks are impressed in the damp paper by the dolly roller as the paper comes off the roll. As with all watermarks, the rosettes and crosses in the DLR Lakatoi issues are on the dolly roller in fixed positions in relation to each other.

I've identified a cross that appears to contradict this as it's clearly inside one of the rosettes and not in the location shown in the sheet diagram shown in one of the posts above this.

It's shown in a sheet pane which was part of a one frame exhibit I did a few years ago. Here's the front of the pane (the cross is in the top left corner):



The rear of the pane autoenhanced so it shows up things a bit better (unfortunately the minor toning is also enhanced). In this view of the pane, the cross is naturally in the top right hand corner rosette:



Further image enhancing the portion of the sheet pane where the cross is located actually doesn't help much when the image is shown in the normal 800 X 600 format ( an optical illusion of sorts) so this one is shown much smaller to make the cross/rosette more visible:



Looking at the location of the crosses in relation to the sheet diagram, something just doesn't add up to me.

My pane looks to be from the top left of the sheet, yet the cross position and location in relation to the rosettes and the sheet diagram is all wrong.

Perhaps my example could be termed "Type D"

I'd be interested in comments on this one.

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Tony

Hi Tony

As discussed before by phone, it looks like the sheet was cut out of sequence yet in saying this lets hope that a few others can be found by members and posted so that we can get a good overview of the positional markers.

I have my own personal views on the sheet layout as discussed that may not necessarily be agreed by other collectors and will continue to research them before releasing a paper to the wider stamp community.

In the meantime if there are anymore out there that members may have then please post them here.


Thanks for your assistance Tony, as always very welcome.


Cheers Robbo

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I am a Collector of all British New Guinea, Papua and TP&NG. Would love to talk to fellow collectors of same. Robbo

Hope the image comes out ok. This is SG23.

BNG7

The image came out fine, I will check my sheet scans tonight to see if I can plate it and determine if its a central X or position 3/28.

Thanks for helping the search and hope others follow suit.

Cheers Robbo

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I am a Collector of all British New Guinea, Papua and TP&NG. Would love to talk to fellow collectors of same. Robbo

Hi BNG7

It's position 28 type B the short stout P of Postage on the Right hand side is identical with the stamp from sheet scan below as is the leaf shading.

[IMG]http://i554.photobucket.com/albums/jj403/robbo-
robinson61/3PapLgOpt2dThpWmkV-Copy.jpg[/IMG]

Cheers Robbo

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I am a Collector of all British New Guinea, Papua and TP&NG. Would love to talk to fellow collectors of same. Robbo

Hello Robbo,

Thanks for the plating tip. I'm yet to fathom the Paper-marker's sheet though. To me, the way the type C is illustrated, it appears as position 28 on the sheet. Anyhow, off to the fireworks.

Robbo, you need to remove the extraneous space from your image code so the rest of us can see it, like this:

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A man might as well marry ... if he finds a good wife he will be happy ... if not, he will become a philosopher.
Collecting Greater New Guinea & Macropods (Kangaroos & Wallabies).

I have checked my 87 BNG Lakatoi stamps and found no watermark crosses.

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A man might as well marry ... if he finds a good wife he will be happy ... if not, he will become a philosopher.
Collecting Greater New Guinea & Macropods (Kangaroos & Wallabies).

Thanks Hans

Cheers Robbo

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I am a Collector of all British New Guinea, Papua and TP&NG. Would love to talk to fellow collectors of same. Robbo

Hello Robbo,

Have watched the 9.30 pm fireworks in the Gong, and they were terrific. Now back to business.

If the watermark cross is central between four rosettes as SG23 displays in the earlier post, then shouldn't it be type C and subsequently position 13 ?

BNG7

Thats the problem it's not!!!!

If you go to my earlier thread and look at the strip of 5 you will see that X Cross watermark between the rosettes on the top stamp.

So that can't be position 13

Cheers Robbo

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I am a Collector of all British New Guinea, Papua and TP&NG. Would love to talk to fellow collectors of same. Robbo

Hello Robbo,

I'm still not with it - could be the effects of too much Xmas indulging.

On the Paper-marker's sheet illustrated with vertical watermarks, I see 7 crosses. None of these indicates to me a position 3 unless the sheet is turned around making for horizontal watermarks. Should there be 2 more crosses, 1 at the centre top of panel 2, and one at the centre bottom of panel 8 giving a total of 9 crosses ?

Still learning !!

All the best for the New Year.

BNG7

So far this is the only one i have found, I still have a few mint to go through. Hope the scan is OK

cheers
Si

BNG7 and Si

Firstly to answer BNG7's question, the sheet template above is Horizontal and if you turned it to make the left side the top side then it would become Vertical showing position 3 in the top middle pane, and also in the bottom middle pane would become position 28.

Hi Si and welcome, Ford Cortina is an interesting name and one that I am very aware of as my father use to work for Lotus in the UK and we had one that was tricked up by them when I was a kid.

Thanks for the scan and yes you can see the watermark X Cross, it's good fun when you start looking and actually find one as the value has just jumped by a large percentage.

Hope we can get some more found by other members to help with my study.

Cheers Robbo

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I am a Collector of all British New Guinea, Papua and TP&NG. Would love to talk to fellow collectors of same. Robbo

Ahoj Robbo!

I was unaware of these cross variations in the rosette watermarks. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.

Do the crosses only occur on the New Guinea stamps or do you also find them on Zanzibar and South Africa with a similar watermark?

Going back to the New Guinea stamps, I could not find any crosses on my used, which is what I collect, but I did find a cross on a mint one that was in one of my club books of duplicates for sale unrecognized.

The following scan shows the stamp in question, but I am finding it difficult to make the watermark visible in the scan. I use PhotoStudio, so can anyone suggest a specific option I could choose to enhance the clarity of the watermark? It is quite clear when held against a light.





If it proves impossible to bring out the image, should I draw in the approximate position of the cross in relation to the rosettes or is that too imprecise to be any help?

Cheers,

Honza

Honza, in my post up the page a bit, this image of part of the back of the stamp was enhanced using the pretty basic tools in MS Office. It's normally a matter of adjusting the brightness, contrast and mid-tones by experimentation to get the clearest image you can.

This was the best I could do:



The w/mark cross is near the middle, the black cross at left is just an alignment printer's guide.

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Tony

Thanks Tony.

These adjustments have to be made at the scanning stage, do they?

The scan that I have shown cannot itself be enhanced? Is that right?

Cheers,

Honza

Once you have scanned the back of the stamp (best to scan with a black background by the way) and have saved the scan to your hard drive, that's when I start the enhancement process.

BTW - I always save the enhanced version under a slightly different file name so if it all goes pear shaped you can go back to the original scan.

There are also ways of scanning a stamp once it has been dipped in lighter fluid. That will bring out the details better but I never use lighter fluid, too toxic in my book.

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Tony

Hi Honza

Just returned home after traveling today, great find and In your Club book as well, bet that the stamp will no longer be a club book item anymore, Haha

If you follow Tony's instructions it should work yet I have as much trouble as anyone else when it comes to scaning watermarks as it is very difficult.

Great question on the Zanzibar and Johore series, I have spoken with Tony on this very question and can only say it is very possible, if you and or others reading this thread collect the 2 above countries and find any then please post the info with pictures here as everyone would love to see them.

Again great find.

Cheers Robbo

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I am a Collector of all British New Guinea, Papua and TP&NG. Would love to talk to fellow collectors of same. Robbo

Ahoj Robbo!

Thanks for your reply.

I have had another go at scanning the watermark, but without much success. I think you can just about make out two rosettes - one in the second quarter of the bottom edge and the other in the right third of the stamp going up to halfway.



The cross is not really visible but it is behind the bottom hinge and the vertical points at the 10th perforation hole from the right, looking at it from the back of the stamp. The vertical goes down until it is about level with the top petal of the second rosette mentioned above.

The horizontal extends to the right until it is above the start of the upper petal of the second rosette.

Looking from the back of the stamp, if you imagine a vertical line joining the 10th perforation holes from the right (top and bottom)and a horizontal line joining the sixth holes down (left and right), you are at the centre of the cross.

Hope that's not too complicated.

Cheers,

Honza

I loaded up a copy of you original stamp rear image, manipulated it every which way and still cannot see anything.

Unfortunately with the thick paper types the w/marks are far harder to see than those on thin paper. Adding to that is the normal "crazed" gum very common to these issues. That results in small light reflections at various angles, not helpful with this sort of investigative work.

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Tony

Ahoj Tony!

Thanks for trying.

Looking through the stamp against a light the watermarks are unmistakable both the rosettes and the cross even though this is behind a (transparent) hinge. Is there any easy way of photographing such an image with a light behind it?

By the way I checked my South African and Zanzibar stamps today and found no crosses.

Cheers,

Honza

Picked this SG9a up from an auction in Europe several weeks a go.





Thought I would share it.

Cheers Robbo

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I am a Collector of all British New Guinea, Papua and TP&NG. Would love to talk to fellow collectors of same. Robbo