I would like to keep these pages in chronological order, but around early 2004 things are a bit muddled. Partly because accounts are vague or contradictory, but mainly because a lot of things happened at the same time. Stamps would be made available to collectors and remain within the canon of the story related in Going Postal. It seems logical to follow the Imperforate Patrician with its successor, the Eminence Gris. Still the same stamp, but now with the required amount of grey hair. There was a reason why they grey hair was mentioned in the books and why actual such stamps should be printed. As explained by Bernard Pearson, Of course there is no truth in the rumour that Mr Briggs resorts to colouring (his hair), save when he is treading the boards. however when it was put to one that it would be a jolly lark to have just a few of the Patrician Pennys with the hand of time restored to his tonsoreal splendour, then who am I to gainsay it. And thus it was done.

The Eminence Gris were printed in sheets of 91 (arranged 13x7) and were perforated firstly at Bath Postal Museum and later in Wincanton on the Emporium`s own perforator. Other stamps perforated at Bath have both the rat-nibbled versions and the improved version after the perforator pins had bees wax applied. I have only seen the better perforated versions. All were only available in LBEs.

These are a Bath perforated example and two Wincanton perforated. It appears that the Bath and the first of the Wincantons have less grey than the other Wincanton, while the Wincantons seem to have a very slightly yellowish background to the design (see below), most noticeable on the corners and larger lettering. This suggests different print runs with some adjustment to the design part way through the lifetime of the stamp. This is discussed later in the Close-Up page.

There are some Streaky and Colour variants of this stamp. The streaks can be seen in smaller sheets of 14 stamps. This suggests that this is deliberate, rather than a print flaw. The Colour variations (from very pale background to the stamp design to a decidedly creamy colour) apply to individual stamps and therefore are also deliberate. Other sheets included inverted stamps hence both vertical and horizontal tete-beche pairs exists. When the $1 TOA had its second print runs (when the sheet selvedge had added text and decoration) the space below the TOA sheet on the A4 paper could be used for short runs of special limited availability stamps. This was common practice on the later TOA sheets to provide extra sports. There is room on that paper for a 2 x7 sheetlet of Patrician sized stamps. Are the Streaky stamps sports? Quite possibly. In some of these small sheets one stamp or more was inverted, giving a lucky collector a chance of a tete-beche pairing