Control Numbers of the Cleaned Plate Issue of the 40 Lepta Large Hermes Heads

by Louis Basel

(This article was originally published in Philoteliki Lesbos, No. 208, July/August, 2003. It is reprinted here with some slight modifications.)

The importance of the control numbers in the classification of the Large Hermes Heads has been discussed by many philatelists^{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6} and these discussions will not be repeated here. The control numbers of the so-called Cleaned Plate Issue (Groom Issue G) of the 40 lepta are important also because it was in this issue that so many of them had sustained damage allowing us to identify characteristic zeros and fours. The preceding issue, Groom F, the last of the Consecutive Athens Issues of the 40 lepta (with a grayish-rose color on gray-lilac paper) had the same zeros as those in the Cleaned Plate setting but these zeros had not sustained the same extent of damage and there are thus fewer characteristic zeros in that issue.

The Cleaned Plate Issue of the 40 Lepta

This 40 lepta issue can be identified by the characteristic neat impression of the face of the stamps which is also evident in the other values. However, there are examples which have a rather coarse impression with the dots in the spandrels touching the wavy lines whereas in those with a neat impression these wavy lines and dots are lightly printed and completely separate. Please see examples in Figures 1 and 2.

Another characteristic feature of these issues is their control numbers. As is well known, in the Consecutive Athens and earlier issues, the control numbers generally had their right sides heavier than the left but this difference gradually became reduced until in the Cream Paper Issue there is almost no difference between the two sides. In the Cleaned Plate Issue, we begin to see a thickening of the left sides of the control number digits which is noticeably different than in the previous Consecutive Athens Issues. This aspect of the controls helps to avoid confusing the coarser Cleaned Plate stamps from the preceding Athens issues. However, the final test is the control number which, once the stamp’s position on the sheet is determined, can be compared with the control number images presented here to see if there is a match.

¹ Groom Theodore, The Controls of the 20 Lepta and their Bearing on the Classification of Greek Stamps of the First Type, Philotelia, No. 3-4, March 24, 1924.
² Bellas, Ulysse, La Tete de Mercure: Generalities & Reconstitution de la Planche des 20 Lepta, p. 25.
³ Coundouros, John G. and C. A. Stassinopoulos, The Importance of the Control Numbers in the Classification of Greece’s First Type According to Groom, Philotelia, No. 517, p. 120-134, 1986.
⁴ Basel, L., The 1867 Controls of the 20 Lepta Large Heads, Philotelia, No. 544, pp. 219-30, 1990.
⁵ Constantinidis, Tryphon (Translated by L. Basel), A Study of the Stamps of Greece, p. 31, 1978.
⁶ Coundouros, John G. The Control Numbers and the Classification of the Stamps of the Large Hermes Heads, Athens, 2000, p. 85.

Analysis of the ink spot patterns of several of these Cleaned Plate stamps shows that those stamps with the coarse impression were the first of this issue to be printed. It is my opinion that the cause of this change from coarse to neat impression is the change in the underlay. As is well known, the underlay used to print the large head stamps was changed from the so-called hard method (i.e. the use of a few sheets of paper under the sheet being printed) to the soft method in which a felt or cloth sheet was used. The Consecutive Athens Issues generally used the soft method as is evidenced by the presence of relief (or embossing). I believe that the first coarser Cleaned Plate stamps were printed using the soft method and that the later neat impression stamps used the hard method. In fact, these stamps are not clean as shown by the bar graph of Figure 3, in which the number of ink spots is plotted for several stamps in each of the issues of Position 66. These stamps were placed in a sequence so that those with the same ink spots were adjacent. They could not logically be placed otherwise.

This chart clearly shows that in Issue F, the last of the Consecutive Athens printings, there was an increase in the number of ink spots to a maximum of 17. Then the first of the Cleaned Plate had 18 ink spots gradually decreasing to 13, followed by the 1871 issue with 5 and the remaining issues only 2. This chart also shows the three coarse Cleaned Plate stamps with the bars shaded dark gray were the first to be printed followed by the five neat stamps with the light gray shading.

The question of whether the plate was cleaned during the printing of the Cleaned Plate Issue can be answered by observing the reduction in the ink spots from 18 at the beginning to 13 at the end of this period. It should be noted that I had only seven Cleaned Plate stamps in this Position 66 and that if more had been available, an example with fewer ink spots might have been found. Similarly in the Groom F stamps, where only three examples were available, more examples might have shown that the maximum number of ink spots in this issue was 18, the same as in the Groom G.

In the Hellas 2003 catalogue.⁷, it is stated “The first printings of this issue were produced after a thorough cleaning of the plates of all seven values. The early impressions were very fine and clear, but the quality gradually worsened, so that later printings produced stamps that in no way seem to be a result of cleaned plates.” I believe that these statements are in error on two counts. First the plates were not cleaned prior to printing this issue and secondly, the impressions did not gradually worsen, but in fact the opposite is true. The first printings were coarse and the last were neat due to a change in the underlay.

⁷ Karamitsos, A. Hellas 2003 Stamp Catalogue and Postal History, Vol. I, p. 16.

Another characteristic of these stamps is the color of the face. I have found that the majority of these stamps have mauve to pale mauve color with a few having a reddish mauve shade. Others give color identifications as listed in Table I. The color of these Cleaned Plate stamps is clearly not as bright as the early Consecutive Athens Issues Groom B, C, and D, while Issue E has the palest mauve color of all. Also, in most cases, those stamps with the reddish shade have a coarse impression and were the first of the Cleaned Plate issues to be printed.

The Control Numbers

Previously, John Coundouros.¹² published images of 107 positions of the controls of this setting but these were in small actual size and many were indistinct. Here we present enlarged images for 147 of the 150 positions on the sheet of 40 lepta. The three missing positions, 2, 28 and 129 were not available. Of these 147 images, positions 1, 5, 39, and 139 were provided by Chris Belias in the form of digital scanned images. I gratefully acknowledge his valuable assistance, not only for providing some of the missing images but also for adding some control number flaws which I had missed.

Three of the control numbers of the 40 lepta Cleaned Plate Issue have inverted zeros.¹³ in positions 1, 5, and 123. In position 127, a 40 lepta stamp was printed with a “20" control number. This was corrected by manually overprinting the “2" with a “4". Later, sheets with the correct “40" were printed.¹⁴

⁸ Constantinidis, Tryphon, ibid., p. 174.
⁹Vlastos 2001, Hellas - Stamp Catalogue and Postal History, p. 17.
¹⁰Karamitsos, A., ibid., p. 17.
¹¹Coundouros, John G., ibid., p. 85.
¹² Ibid., p.231.
¹³Ibid., p. 100.
¹⁴Ibid., p. 97.