Printing errors on Personalised Stamps

The personalised stamps (PS's) that we can buy from the Dutch TNT Post are not made on a printing-press like 'normal' stamps are. Instead the personal image and eventually text of the maker are printed on a pre-pressed sheet containing the country name and value. When you order more than 1 sheet, they are individually printed.
That they are printed is very clearly visible on the sheets with PS's that can be made on fairs and the bigger post offices (see the article about the Postex). Those are provided with an end-paper on the backside, which carries the name 'Oki'. Indeed, the computer printer manufacturer.
In the printing process errors occur occasionally. Because the PS's are printed by sheet, the sheets can be not fully identical. An example are the sheets with Hulsmann stamps that I have made a few years ago, on which the position of the images compared to the border was not the same on all sheets:

Personalised Stamps with Hulsmann motorcycle
On the right stamps the image is positioned more to the right and higher.
Both stamps come from the same order, but different sheets!

We had another remarkable exemplary variation in the last auction: a block of one of the Burki stamps (see the article in Newsletter 92) where one of the stamps contained a white spot (in the red circle that I drew on it for illustration):

Burki stamps with printing error

Recently Eric discovered that on some sheets of the Newsletter stamp for newsletter 89 there are a few lines over the text '44 eurocent'. This was in all cases on the upper left stamp in the sheet, but not on all sheets!

Personalised Stamps MFN with printing error

In this way the PS's are becoming interesting for puzzlers: find the differences.....

Paul Essens

 

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