P is for Perforations
They might just be tiny holes used to separate a stamp, but their number and style can make a world of difference. Back in 1840 when the first adhesive postage stamps appeared, they were printed in sheets without any perforations or other means of easily separating them, leaving postal workers to cut them apart with scissors. Today, stamps are perforated using machines meaning most modern issues have consistent perforations, but for older stamps there are many differences which create more varieties to collect.
A brief history
Despite various attempts to solve the problem of separating stamps, it was Henry Archer, one of the founders of the Festiniog Railway Company in Wales, who perfected the world’s first stamp perforating machine in 1850. After observing a railway booking-clerk pin-perforating a bundle of tickets, Archer laboured for several years to perfect a machine which rouletted the paper, before coming up with a contraption that actually punched out the tiny discs of paper and removed them. The revolutionary machine was officially adopted by the Post Office in 1854.
Back in the 1850s no one knew, or cared, about the size of the holes or the number of holes along the side of a standard postage stamp, but by the 1860s, Parisian philatelist Dr Jacques-amable Legrand realised that stamps that appeared to be identical actually differed in the gauge of their perforations.
Legrand’s interest in the subtle variation prompted him to invent a simple device for measuring the perforations. This was a card with rows of dots of various sizes. The scrupulous collector moved the stamp across the card until the spaces between the denticulations fitted neatly with the black dots, and then read off the numbers at the sides. Legrand’s Odontometre (or perforation gauge) was based on the number of dots or holes in a space of two centimetres. Thus a stamp with 14 holes in a length of two centimetres is said to gauge 14, while a stamp with 15 holes per two centimetres would be perf 15. Legrand soon realised that the gauge of perforations was far more subtle and thus made allowance for intermediate gauges, but his pioneering work changed the way collectors viewed their stamps forever.
Numerous varieties
Where a stamp has two different gauges of perforation, a description such as perf 15 x 14 would indicate that the gauge is 15 horizontally (top and bottom) and 14 vertically (along the sides). There have even been stamps with three different gauges, with the top and bottom different as well as the sides, but such a phenomenon is very unusual.
Why do perforations matter? It is not uncommon for similar stamps to be produced at various times, perhaps by different printing contractors. Superficially the stamps may look alike, but their perforations have a different gauge. In many cases, this subtle deviation makes all the difference between a common stamp worth a few pence, and a major rarity of immense value.
This is certainly true in the case of the Penny Reds of 1848-54 when Henry Archer was conducting his experiments. The penny stamps from plates 70 or 71, with Archer’s original roulette, are priced by Gibbons at £4,500 in mint condition, whereas the stamps from plates 90 to 101, perf 16, from the 1850 experiment are priced at a mere £700 mint. By contrast, many of the later stamps, perf 14, may only be worth a pound or two.
Adhesive alterations
Perforation itself has undergone some major changes in recent years. Britain pioneered the elliptical perforations, which was introduced primarily as a security device. This device was so successful that it has since been adopted by many other countries, and some have even taken it a stage further with fancy perforations, such as the ‘maple leaf’ device used by Canada.
Another factor in recent years has been the emergence of selfadhesive stamps. In some cases (notably in France) these stamps were produced in booklets without perforations.
It was soon found that stamps with the characteristic ragged edge of perforations adhered more efficiently to mail. This was something learned by the British Post Office back in the 1850s, the number of loose stamps found in mailbags dropping dramatically after perforation was adopted.