The Sio Stamp
Color Shades of the SioThe Sio was printed on thick woven and unwatermarked paper. There are two types of gum applied: Dark brown gum on dark paper, and white gum and white gum (latter production). There are cases where the rubber lining has been restored. This led to the "shrinking" of the stamps. These post-gum stamps have little value
The targeted color for this stamp was claimed to be Chesnut, but actually we have a vermilion stamp. There are five recognized shades going from darker to lighter. The darker shades are more valuable. Constant VarietiesUsing a number of plain and overprinted Sio blocks of stamps, it was possible to reconstruct most of a sheet. The stamps that were missed in the analysis are located in the bottom right quadrant of the sheet.
The master location heat map Below shows interesting features such as engraving errors and re-entry. The color coding of this heat map shows where to find the more interesting areas, that is to say those in red. The following two pages show some of the main points of interest identified. Some of the most interesting stamps include:
Points of Interest: |
This stamp printed by Waterlow & Sons Ltd of England. It also shows a side portrait of King Chulalongkorn. Like the other stamps in the series 500,000 pieces were printed. A Sio is worth 2 atts and the value in written in the oval in Thai.
Stamp Size and DimensionsThe dimensions of the stamp are 23 x 28 mm.
The larger size is possibly due to printing on the Salung paper. Mr. Prakob Chirakiti has observed stamp size variations of 22.5 mm to 23 mm in width, and 27.5 to 28 mm in height due to shrinkage. There are cases where the rubber lining has been restored. This led to the "shrinking" of the stamps. These post gum stamps have little value. PerforationAgain, like the Solot, this stamp is perforated by a single line machine of 14.5 or 15 perforations compound: The full sheet contains 80 stamps. The 14.5 perforation is from the same sheets but is rarer and hence more valuable. It is the byproduct of an error in Waterlow’s perforation machine.
|