Other than a small publication by Hans Reiche in 1987, very little information and fewer images have been offered for Plate Flaws of the Admiral Issue. In his major work of 1982, Marler provided us with a tremendous amount of information on re-entries and retouches, but he listed only a few flaws.
The Unitrade catalogue lists only four Admiral plate flaws: the “shilling mark” on the one cent green (sheet and coil), the ’N’ and ‘V’ flaws of the seven cent brown and a cracked plate variety of the fifty cent.
A large number of plates were used to print the Admiral issue: well over 200 for the 1 cent alone. Careful attention to detail will quickly show the enthusiast that “the Admirals” are rife with printing flaws. This site is my effort to document many of these interesting constant plate varieties. I hope to encourage others to compare their findings and share our knowledge.
In 2013 (*The Admirals's Log,* Vol. XIII, No. 1, page 13) I proposed a method which quickly describes the location of a variety on an Admiral stamp and that method will be the key to efficiently using this site.
The "Fault Group" number indicates the area of the stamp where the variety is located. If the variety overlaps two or more zones, the zone numbers are added together to determine the "Fault Group".
"Click" on any of the (Fault Group) numbers above to quickly see how the system works. The fault must be contained within the coloured area to be a member of that fault group.
If your stamp is already on the site, finding it should be a very easy, two step process.
1) From the “Denomination” pull down menu pick the value and colour of the stamp you wish to research.
2) From the “Fault Group” pull down menu pick the Zone (as illustrated above.)
You will be offered close-up pictures of the various varieties reported in the Fault Group location for the stamp in question. From that group, it should be quite easy to determine if a match to your stamp has been reported.
If you find your stamp on the site, please click the red “Comment/Help” button and report your example.
With two or more reported examples of a fault, it will be considered "constant" and added to Marler and Beyond.
If you do not find your stamp, please consider reporting it to me directly for site consideration.