Palm Trees

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Only Yesterday i remembered that I completely forgot that this blog has already one Year... Yes, one year has passed , since March 2014, when I wrote the first two posts for the blog.. I read them today , and I get the idea that my goal was very different from that I have today... My constant search for a stable and coherent model for the blog was always bumping in my need of keeping all this project as 'fun' and not as a daily job like many others.. With time I began to make several posts for week, and the discussion at that time was the size of the posts and the number of stamps I should present in each of them... I never hold this interior debate from You, always giving updates on my latest thoughts about it..Now that I have 2 blogs , one with several posts by week and other in a weekly bases, I am beginning to think that what I have is something similar to a daily Job.(.) .... I can even think that all of this Computer activity is keeping me away from the real challenge that was and still is in front of me.. to get a job..! Am I wasting time?? 

Well, together with these more philosophical questions, I have spent my weekend doing some stamp work...after a quick look at the stamps I have from Malaya , i decided to dedicate this post to one single design... 

 Here it is the design I was mentioning , where we have King George VI in the Center of an Oval shaped figure with interior lined background..in the exterior of this figure (also with lined background ), we have two palm trees , one in each side of the Oval figure..The oval figure rests above some land from where the palm trees emerge..All this scenario is kept inside a frame with values at right and left and State Labels at the center , both below the land ; 'Malaya' is  at the Top of the stamp, above the Oval figure and the Palm trees....

 I am aware that this should be a 'boring' post for many of You, but due to the quantity of stamps I have with this design , I have no other option then to ' pick the bull by it's horns' and present them now... I will start like always, chronologically...

This design , with the King and the Palm trees , exist also with King George V, but I will present only King George VI stamps...The first time the design appears , it was issued by 'Straits Settlements' ..(what is this??)..well, the history and development of this part of the British Crown could be considerate as one of the most difficult to explain... I will just consider that Straits Settlements was a group of 3 settlements, Mallaca, Penang and Singapore who was joined latter by the fourth settlement of Labuan.. Straits Settlements became a separated Colony in 1867...
This series of Straits Settlements is dated from 1937/1941... it is a Watermarked series, but  it presents us, like most of the King George VI stamps with this design, a paper that was used several times in other British stamps, that is very smooth and flat in the front .. it is called Chalk- Surfaced Paper... this paper has the particularity of making almost impossible the visualization of the Watermark without the utilization of external tools.. that is to say, You can not see the Watermark using only Your eyes..! knowing that some of these stamps could present Inverted Watermarks and other watermark variations or errors, I classified  them , leaving all this Watermark business to another time... All this stamps must have another detailed view before they definitely join the collection...(when I say ' all the stamps' I mean it (the originals and the duplicates- spare stamps-..) ;
 to start the classification of this series , I need to know of the existence of two different types...

 Type 1: the lines of the external Background and the branches of the Palm Trees , touch the Oval frame... in the picture presented at the [Left] this is clearly seen , but there are other cases where this distinction is not so clear...  Type 2 : in type 2 the lines of the background and the palm trees do not touch the oval frame , because of the existence of a white oval line surrounding the oval frame... it is visible in the picture at the [right] , where we can see that the background lines do not cross this exterior defense of the oval frame... 
Straits Settlements 1937/1941 "King George VI" (15) [Typo (De La Rue)] Sc(239c,240,241a,243,245,250)

 After the Japanese Surrender in 1945, Malaya was officially under  British Military Administration... British troops landed on the Islands... Using the stock existent of stamps printed by De La Rue  in the Pre-War period, the Straits Settlements stamps were then overprinted with ' BMA Malaya '... these stamps were used in the Malaya states and in Singapore..., the existing types are again in order, and some new papers were used but they are treated as varieties (they appear in the SG Catalog and not in the Sc World catalog..)

 At the right we have now same spare stamps , with some different color shades, but the main reason they appear here is that I haven't yet done the Watermark Work, so all these stamps are still 'aboard'...

1945/1948 "Straits Settlements stamps Overprinted with 'BMA Malaya'" (15) [Typo (De La Rue)] Sc(256,257,258,260,262,268)

 Singapore issued two series with this Design...Here are some stamps of the first series from Singapore.. These stamps have  Perforation 14 and in both series the same smooth and flat paper is used ...we have single color stamps until the 15c stamp and from here we have bi colored stamps... I think I must highlight that in SG catalogs the color of the Center Oval figure came first and then the color of the rest of the stamp.. in Sc catalog , the opposite happens .. the

 surrounding colors came first and them the center color... 
Together with these stamps I present a group of 4 10c spare stamps...

Singapore 1948 "King George VI" (15) [Typo (De La Rue)] Sc(1,2,4,9,11,12,14,17,18)

 Now some of the stamps of the 2nd series are presented.. they have a very unusual perforation (17.5x 18) and this fact increases the difficulty  to own stamps with good and clear  perforations... in this series is highly advisable to do our Watermark Homework correctly in the 1$ stamps , because that could turn into a very profitable time..

now I want to ask a simple question : in two of the dollar stamps (1$ and 5$) I can find some weird abnormalities, but i don't know if they are usual or not , but I really think they should be listed in the catalogs as Varieties...

At the left  , two pictures of two different 1$ stamps are presented.. the fact I wish to focus is the presence in the 2nd picture [DownLeft] of portions of the land inside the Oval figure.. the normal in any other of the stamps here presented is to have no land inside the Oval figure  or just a small touch of the figure in the land (as presented in the picture [AboveLeft]..Now the question... Why can't this be considered as a variety, if I proved that it doesn't always happens but it could happen..?? which of these two 1$ stamps is the normal one??

At [Right] we find another small example of this 'land intrusion' in a 5$ stamp...
[Down] some more spare stamps from this series.. 

Singapore 1948/1952 "King George VI" (18) [Typo (De La Rue)] Sc(1a,2a,4a,5,8,9a,11a,13,14a,15,17a,18a,19a,20a)

These are Penang stamps.. Penang was one of the Straits Settlements states, and joined the Federation of Malaya States in 1948.. the stamps presents no differences from the others, Watermarked, the same paper, and perforation 17.5 x 18... 

Penang 1948/1952 "King George VI" (20) [Typo (De La Rue)] Sc(4,6,8,11,13,19)

Malacca also joined the FMS in 1948..

Malacca 1948/1952 "King George VI" (20) [Typo (De La Rue)] Sc(4,5,6,9)

Sorry for this 'boring' post , but I think in the end it was very good for me to learn something about these stamps ... I have to think clearly in buying some Watermark detection Automatic Machine , because the old detection with liquids is not  practical ....

I think next week I will have some India stamps...

SeeYou..