Sewing machine roulettes on Vietnamese stamps
Sewing machine roulette (also known as “Perce en points” or pin roulette) is one of the oldest and widely spread methods to separate stamps. As the name suggests, roulette is created with sewing (or similar) machine. In this roulette, small holes are pricked trough the paper one at a time,and no paper is removed (which is why this is a roulette, and not a perforation). These characteristic makes it somewhat easy to differentiate pin roulette from normal perforation. Lots of countries have used it up to very recent times, but as I’ve got my Vietnamese collection open, let’s display some of them.
First a Vietnamese stamp commemorating a centenary of Einstein’s birth. This is a very ordinary pin roulette as the teeth holes have lots of remainders still intact and the result is very uneven.
1979 Vietnam - A centenary from birth of Albert Einstein
Then another item, and something I hope more knowledgeable readers of the blog might be able to answer…. Notice how the following stamps have varying papers and perforation / roulette styles. I’d like to know why such a variance?
1979 Vietnam - Five Year Plan (1976-1980).
The non-specialized catalogs I have, don’t mention nothing about this. However, I know that in some countries (like North Korea) printing quality has been occasionally tied to audience. Stamps going to local markets were printed to low quality pulp paper (and using other low quality methods such as pin roulette) while exported stamps (to western collectors) had premium paper (and other better grade solutions). Is it the same with these Vietnamese stamps, or is this just normal printers variation?
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Thanks for this post Keijo, it was helpful. I am also seeing variations in perforations and roulette styles within sets in some older South American issues. Since most catalogues do not list these variations for countries of lower collector’s interest (especially Vietnam) I have not been careful to look for them. I will be inspecting stamps a bit more carefully in the future.
Thanks David
Especially early Mexican stamps should provide lots of similar variation to these.
Why the variance? It’s easy to guess that the perforation machines wore out at times and there was no replacement. Hence some imperfs were acquired by collectors even though the stamps were not meant to be so.
Sorry, but your notes on two different types of paper for printing stamps are incorrect. There’s only one case this was observed, in the 1950s, when some kind of thinner paper was used to reprint the 30 and 50D values of the Land Reform set. These two stamps, in mint condition, are rare today.
Hi Thanh
and thanks for the (insightful) comment.
How do you explain the difference (visible in image too)? The first 6xu stamp is on bright white (glossy/coated-like) paper, the following 6xu stamps are on more or less rough (pulp-like) paper. I know the papers are different – I can see and feel it.
They are different stamps, aren’t they?
For the 35 years of my collecting, I have not known of a single “westerner” who collects only one or some stamps out of a full set!
The mentioned 5-value set can be found here
@Thanh…
Yes, they are different stamps. But why would they have printed one stamp on a series on different paper? That doesn’t make sense. The VietStamps website states “Type of paper: Uncoated paper, glue on the back”. But that’s not true in my opinion. The first stamp on my photo is definitely on coated/glossy paper. No doubt about it.
If looking at the images on VietStamps catalogue, I would say the same applies there too for some copies. The 2nd and 3rd stamp appear to be on whiter paper than others; so likely they have printed on coated/glossy paper. This would make the situation even more interesting, as it would mean all/some stamps in this series exist in (at least) two types of paper. Instead of looking at what’s listed in stamp catalogues, I’m simply putting my own observations forth here.
Hi Keijo,
Be sure that any stamp in this set, and 99.9% of others, is printed on a single type of paper only.
Different values of a set can be printed on different papers due to shortage of material. Note that this particular set was issued in June 1979, only a few months after China’s war against the country.
The translation provided be google is unfortunately wrong. If you chose the website’s official English version, you would have found a better translation: “Ungummed paper” (http://www.vietstamp.net/2/Product/1673/). This fact is however not related to the issue under discussion.
Rgds.