The bulk of the first Penny Patricians were printed and perforated by Enschede, the Dutch security printing firm. As such, they are of the highest quality (the company have produced stamps for many issuing authorities). When dealing with such a company there are certain restrictions. The stamps receive comb perforations, meaning that there is a hole exactly at each corner. This is achieved by the stamp dimensions being fixed to provide a whole number of perforation holes on each side. Thus the size of the Penny Patrician was, to a large extent, dictated by Enschede. Sharper eyed collectors have noticed that while the Enschede and home-produced Penny Patricians are the same size, the Enschede stamp design is 0.5mm lager in both directions; the borders consequently being slightly narrower
It was Waterstones behind linking up Discworld to Enschede, as they required a large number of stamps for their Going Postal cover that would accompany first editions of the book. In fact, the stamps are almost too good to pass for first attempt by Teemer and Spools in low-tech Ankh-Morpork.

The stamps were produced in sheets of 20 with plain selvedge, and these were the only Patrician sheets from the first year available to be bought by the public. Some 1,750 of these sheets were produced with 250 broken up for the Waterstones cover.

Despite the high quality printing collectors can still find stamps with a more noticeable pale cream background to the design.