South African series that can be easily confused
Here is a well-known series that might just catch you out.
The South African 2000 Flora & Fauna set, issued in November of that year is large – twenty seven issues, but only five of which are birds. The bulk of the stamps are fish and flowers. To add to the mix, many of the flowers were also repeated as self-adhesive stamps with standardised values, but smaller in size (20x25mm). There were ten for this special rate format, so a complete set is 37 stamps.
The whole set, including fish and flowers are pretty colourful, but I am tempted to say, almost garish. If you find one of the flowers or fishes on cover, you’ll know what I mean. The bird element seems relatively sober in design and takes up most of the higher values.
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I have a wee update to this blog, which I believe illustrates the frustration of finding a truly accurate AND easy to use perforation gauge.
A subsequent quick check about these issues on the Colnect website gives the perforations as 14.75×14.5 for the 1st series and 13 comb for the 2nd series. That’s a little different to the perforations in the blog.. I have re-measured the stamps I hold and could be persuaded that the Colnect figures are correct…… Perhaps.
I normally use a Lindner Philacombi perforation gauge which is truly easy to use and accurate for most issues. The Stanley Gibbons Instanta gauge is much finer and certainly favoured by professionals, but an absolute pig to use. I hate it!
The point remains though, that perforations are important and with these two series, crucial in order for you to distinguish between them.