Places of Interest
A set of three stamps promoting tourism, the reason behind the guild’s original formation, and issued in a two stamp and single stamp release all within the Year of the Three Roses. The Mended Drum stamp was chosen to attract the more ‘adventurous’ tourists, while the Dysk was aimed at those with a more cultural bent. Almost uniquely these stamp were letterpress printed. The artwork is by Karen Dupe (again her only DW stamp appearance) and were based on original Paul Kidby drawings. The is no textual indication that these are Merchants Guild stamps, however the Guild Arms is present and obvious. Each stamp had one sport on the sheet, however because of the artwork and how it printed collectors were spotting minute differences from stamp to stamp. Again a new printer won the contract for these stamps. The sheet selvedge announces that they were engraved and printer by Ronald Goatberger, Publisher, for the Guild of Merchants.

Two other ideas, that never made it, were stamps featuring the Opera House and the Dwarf Bread Museum. I feel a bit cheated that these didn’t appear.

While clearly all part of the same set there are a number if inconsistencies in these stamps. For some reason the $1 stamp has the Patrician’s bust in grey, not black and on an outlined white circle. Its $1 value tablet is white on black, while the $2 is black on white. Those two tablets are different sizes. The value of the 75p is un-boxed and in a different typeface. The 75p has a decorative border, lacking in the other two values. And if that stamp had been valued fifty pence the resultant text could have matched the other two better. Then on the $2 stamp for some reason the TW and the LLAR all run into each other.

Relaxed Patrician sport                          Reversed  Buckles Sport                     Backward Patrician sport

Unusually a few sheets of the $2 Dysk stamp were perforated on an old Edwardian perforating machine as a test. These have 11 holes per 2 cm compared to the 10 per 2 cm of the bulk of the DW stamps. It looks like it wasn’t a great success, and the Wincanton perforator remained the machine of choice. Check your collection for stamps with slightly finer but scruffy perfs!!!!

There was a Consulate cover produced for the original $1 and $2 stamps, with just two with a sports pairing of the stamps a LBE prizes. Then there was a Consulate cover issued only to Journal competition winners which featured stamps by female designers. This was probably limited to just 10 in total.