When The Modern Shift Hits The Fan

The one with the wrong plate for one color would have been real interesting. Do you recall which two different stamp designs it was?

Eyeonwall,

Sorry I do not remember. I am just glad that I did not produce a lot of waist. The powers that be would not have been happy.

If I am correct in my memory they were 29c stamps.

I do remember a few that are collected today. I was not the only one that printed them others did as well on different shifts or different times. We would print so many and change over to a different one that may have been in short supply. When we were done and had some free time on the production board. We printed nondenominational stamps like the A,B, C ect... we would print money orders or USPS forms. So they were a lot to do. We always had something to do very little downtime.

Sometimes we had to take down a press for repairs or maintenance. This would increase the work load on other presses.

Some bees landing and taking off. Part of what I bought at the APS show 2 weeks ago.



Close-up of one of the best shifts.

Wow that is brutally bad printing.
Was there any quality control at the BEP at all?
How did all this printer's waste get out from the shop floor?
Backdoor ?
No wonder that the Bureau Of Engraving and Printing stopped
printing postage stamps.

This was a 2 press operation (offset & intaglio presses) and they had trouble keeping the intaglio registered on this issue and in fact was the issue they had the most difficulty producing.
This was in 1988, long long before USPS stopped using the BEP (somewhere around 2003).
As with any EFO, it should have all been caught, but some of these made it out in regular stock to POs and is thus not considered printer's waste.

The BEP was already doing combination printing back in the 1960's such as the
Homemakers issue of 1964.
First the background on the offset litho press and then 3 colour engraving
on the Giori sheet fed press.
No problem.

Scott 1253



Fast forward 24 years and they print a mess of bees.

Litho, you may have to read up on your presses
Coils were printed on totally different equipment


Peter

Edited to spell my name correctly !!!

Quoting the Nazar PNC catalog

"Although the BP has successfully combined offset and intaglio printing on the same stamp, the Honeybee was the first BEP-produced stamp to have its image produced from the combined printing of two presses (one for offset and one for intaglio) using a continuous paper web (rather than cut sheets)."

edited to fix the quote tag

I still check all the used Bee coils I come across, I haven't found a shifter yet!

Peter I am well aware that the BEP used many different presses over the years
but didnt always get the best results.

Quote below is from the Plate Number Coil Collectors Club site showing
which presses were used to print the 25c Bee stamps.
The C and D presses both Goebel printed also sheet stamps not
just coils.