Q109 Febuary, 2012   member 383   Oversize stamp I recently found this ‘oversized’ stamp. It looks perfectly genuine and has a reversed watermark. Does anyone have an idea about the how and where?

Reply member 74 The stamp is quite genuine, I am sure. These oversize stamps do turn up, although I suspect the number slowly decreases as they are cut down to look like imperfs. The perforating machines did one line at a time, with each step done manually (i.e., not automatically by machine). The operator occasionally made a line of perfs a bit more, or less, from the previous line, thus making lager or smaller stamps (or omitting a line altogether to make an imperf-between variety). The wide or tall stamps seem to have come mostly from the outer rows (or columns) on the sheet, where the operator had a bit more leeway because of the sheet margins.