Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Is there a colour chart that is available anywhere that I can purchase that would help me distinguish all the different or main colour groupings of the KGV Australian stamps.
I have hundreds of them, and it is very difficult and time consuming trying to sort the colours.
Regards
Horamakhet
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I have the same problem with my collection of Penny Blacks.
I know, bad joke. Something that may be of use to you, however, is the Stanley Gibbons "Stamp Colour Key." I use it for Great Britain mainly, but it seems to hold up well with Australia. Available from StanleyGibbons.com or perhaps eBay.
No sure it would save you any time though, as you still have to sort each stamp individually. But it can be very helpful at times.
PS - I would love having the problem of hundreds of KGVs to sort through.
Cheers,
Wine
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The current ‘color’ status of our hobby is abysmal; and publish color standards are doing more harm than good. Published color charts are ephemeral just like stamps, the inks undergo chemical changes over time. So they have a shelf life of less than 7-10 years (most color standard companies recommend they the standards be replaced every 2-3 years). Additionally, to publish a quality color chart is extraordinary expensive over typical book publishing. And adding to the ‘color frustration’ is the fact there our hobby has no standardization on color names. What one catalog calls out as ‘rose red’ another might call ‘pink’.
Any time you see someone trying to define a color while failing to defining ambient light conditions you can safely assume they are clueless. Anyone with a basic understanding of how we see colors understands that we only perceive the reflected color of an object. It is the reflected wavelengths that we see; what appears black to us is an object which absorbs all the wavelengths. An object which appears white to us is reflecting all the wavelengths. So one of the most important criteria in color determination is ambient light. An object can drastically appear a different color by simply changing the ambient light conditions.
And don’t even get me started on trying to determine an object’s color using images and display monitors.
Our hobby’s reliance upon ‘color’ for identification is indeed just like what Wine states; a very bad joke. For stamps, there is only a single way that I know of that we will ever be able to identify a stamps’ true color; chemical molecular analysis. Doing anything ‘optical’ is tilting at windmills since it is common knowledge that inks change over time. For example, if you used a spectrophotometer and Fourier transform techniques to retrieve spectral information on a stamp today and then ran the same exact analysis in 10 years, you would get different results. And frankly even a chemical molecular analysis would change over time but at least the ink chemistry changes can be understood and predicted. The current challenge with a chemical molecular analysis would be to figure out a non-destructive test method.
Folks who study stamp color should stay the course in building reference collections until our hobby comes to grip with all the decades of misinformation that has been peddled. One day we will be able to accurately define and understand stamp colors but we are nowhere close yet.
Don
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using Pantone, CMYK or RAL numbers for colours would be a better way to identify them, but then again, who is going to guarantee that Pantone 241 that matches a certain printing colour is still the same kind of pink as was used when the stamp was printed 100 years ago...
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Colors are a nightmare but doing something like having scans of various colors in the same image can help. It is better than nothing.
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Hi Al,
Relative comparisons do have some value but without any real baselines we are still lost in the weeds. Imagine getting a speeding ticket in your car based upon a relative comparison… policemen says “I do not know how fast he was really going but he was going faster than the other cars”. Yikes.
Determining colors are harder than determining speed. Women, for example, have far more cones in their eyes than men, so their color identification is superior to men. But none of us sees colors exactly the same.
I previously worked a lot with color identification including color matching; this is not a philatelic problem. Everyone feels confident they can ID a color. That is red, that is blue, etc.
But the truth is that when we go to the home improvement store and try to pick a color to paint their walls, the real challenge become apparent. After finally choosing a color we like, when we get home it never looks the same on the wall due to the ambient lighting conditions!
Don
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I still would like to see a side by side image of carmine rose and rose (same stamp) as used on British Commonwealth stamps. (a topic posted recently).
I am not talking about color wheels, patches, etc and situations like comparing carmine rose from rose by a completely different printer (say BEP and DLR). If I see two images even though they may not have perfect color management, I can get a sense of how much red one stamp has versus another as an example.
The color names are useless.
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The stamp on the left is Carmine-Rose and the OS stamp is Rose.
Rob
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Hi Don
Wouldn't printer records of ink colour and shades used be accurate, regardless of colour degradation over the decades?
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Hi Rob,
Perhaps.
As a 'car guy' I have a complete set of paint chips, from 5 different sources including Studebaker, for the cars I collect. They include the exact paint formulas and were used in the period by shops to mix and match the cars of the period. In the car hobby people easily spend $10,000 (US) or more just to paint their car and every tries very hard to make it an original color.
Trouble is, no one can mix these paints today. While paint manufacturers still produce lacquer auto paints, they are nothing like the paints used in the period. There are modern regulations which prevent this.
I assume the same holds true with the old ink formulas. For example, I can personally attest to the hidden dangers with aniline inks and dyes. While working my way through university back in the 1970s, I worked second shift dying cloth in a factory and handled aniline dye.
While it there was a longer history of 'bladder cancer clusters' with workers who handled aniline dye going back decades, they were no regulations at the time. A few years after I left college they passed laws outlawing aniline inks and dyes as a carcinogen. Too late for me and I have been battling bladder cancer for the last 4 years.
So I guess, if the formulas and raw ingredients can be mixed, that a new batch of original inks could be generated. Then you would have to replicate the original paper, get access to some old printing equipment, and make a few runs to demonstrate how the stamp originally appears back in the day.
Don
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You made a good point, I didn't know the serious effect aniline has on a person's health.
Rob
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Don, I had no idea aniline dyes were carcinogens. I am about halfway through a book titled Mauve, about the discovery and manufacture of that dye (color) by William Perkin -- book by Simon Garfield. The story of the aniline dyes is interesting, but I had no idea of the dangers. My wife is recovering from cancer, so the last two years has been an education for us concerning medical treatments. The medical profession is getting quite clever about treatment, so hoping you have a clever doctor or two on your side. At one point my wife was seeing four doctors for cancer and various complications. Lost track of the hours spent in waiting rooms.
The assignment of color to stamps is intriguing, and mercurial. For my Great Britain stamps I have two color columns, one listing Scott color, and the other with SG's take on the color. It is amusing to see how each catalogue describes stamps. I am still trying to get a handle on color, but I feel pretty sure I can distinguish Lake Red from Rose Red now, as well as a few other distinctions.
Cheers,
Wine
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Hi Wine,
Sending thoughts and prayers to you and your wife. I sometimes think that the family of a cancer patient goes through as much, perhaps more, then the patient themselves. I am truly blessed with a great support system including family, friends, and medical caregivers. I am also blessed to have had good medical insurance since over the last 4 years I have managed to rake up $3 million in medical costs. I found life saving surgeons at Duke Cancer Center and when my surgical options ran out (metastasized Stage 4) I found a great medical oncologist who worked to get me approved for one of the new immunotherapy drugs. I have been on it for one year now and I get a full CT scan every 90 days. Over the last 6 months the immunotherapy has shrunk the affected lymph nodes and on Tuesday I met with the oncologist to review the last imaging. The word I got was “NDF” (No Disease Found)!
Considering that 4 previous doctors all told me that I had a 10-15% chance of living more than 6 months, my wife has now stopped planning what to do with the life insurance pay off and is thinking of new ways to knock me off. 
I am even slowly gaining confidence to start buying stamps (but hoping that I am not tempting fate!).
Duke has treated hundreds of bladder cancer patients and I was only the third one that had not been a smoker. This caused them to dig into my background and only after an extensive questioning of my work and life style experiences did they uncover the aniline dye connection. They gave me more information including ‘cancer clusters’ from the late 1800s in European dye houses. (Cancer clusters are a high number of cancer cases that occur in a group of people in a particular geographic area over a limited period of time.)
I totally understand your comment about waiting rooms. I now have over 200 medical procedure per year so one of the many great things that this experience has taught me is patience. I think that I am now a better person than I was pre-cancer.
Don
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Hi to all
Thank you for all the very helpful information.
This is a great forum, everyone helps everyone.
Hi Wine, I will say some special prayers for you and your family.
Looks like I will have to start sorting and try imagining I am getting it right.
Thanks Rob for the scans.
As a gemmologist, I can resort to one idea, I view every stamp under a light that is corrected to daylight at Mid-day which is 5000 nanometres.
They other problem is my wife tells me I am obsessed with stamps, but she still encourages me, by buying everything that comes into the local opp shops, (thrift shops overseas)
Also I am going to buy a uv long & short wave lamp, so that will possibly help distinguish different re-actions.
Its a long work, but I will enjoy it.
Again thanks to all, for the fantastic advice
Regards
HOramakhet.
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Glad to help Horamakhet.
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Hi Rob
Well I finally bought myself a uv long wave short wave lamp and it has other features as well.
Attached are the instructions printed in many languages.
I am sure that in the long run it will pay for itself
I also purchase the latest copy of the ACSC Kangaroo volume. Being in colour makes it so much easier to identify the different dies
Unfortunately, they were out of the latest George V pennies etc volume in colour.
I purchased it from Max Stern in Melbourne it cost $190.00, I have seen them advertised on the net for a lot more.
Regards
Horamakhet
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try colorpix ...
https://colorpix.en.softonic.com/
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Hi Horamakhet
The Philalux 3 looks very interesting, I'll have to see if any are at this end. I am yet to buy the colour catalogues of the 'roo anf KGV.
Rob.
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Hi phos45
I'll download the colorpix and see how it goes.
Rob
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Ho Phos45
The link does not work, It tells me it is no longer available
Regards
Horamakhe
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I just tested it, it still works for me.
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Hi to all
Is there a colour chart that is available anywhere that I can purchase that would help me distinguish all the different or main colour groupings of the KGV Australian stamps.
I have hundreds of them, and it is very difficult and time consuming trying to sort the colours.
Regards
Horamakhet
Login to Like
this post
re: COLOUR CHART FOR KGV AUSTRALIAN STAMPS
I have the same problem with my collection of Penny Blacks.
I know, bad joke. Something that may be of use to you, however, is the Stanley Gibbons "Stamp Colour Key." I use it for Great Britain mainly, but it seems to hold up well with Australia. Available from StanleyGibbons.com or perhaps eBay.
No sure it would save you any time though, as you still have to sort each stamp individually. But it can be very helpful at times.
PS - I would love having the problem of hundreds of KGVs to sort through.
Cheers,
Wine
Login to Like
this post
re: COLOUR CHART FOR KGV AUSTRALIAN STAMPS
The current ‘color’ status of our hobby is abysmal; and publish color standards are doing more harm than good. Published color charts are ephemeral just like stamps, the inks undergo chemical changes over time. So they have a shelf life of less than 7-10 years (most color standard companies recommend they the standards be replaced every 2-3 years). Additionally, to publish a quality color chart is extraordinary expensive over typical book publishing. And adding to the ‘color frustration’ is the fact there our hobby has no standardization on color names. What one catalog calls out as ‘rose red’ another might call ‘pink’.
Any time you see someone trying to define a color while failing to defining ambient light conditions you can safely assume they are clueless. Anyone with a basic understanding of how we see colors understands that we only perceive the reflected color of an object. It is the reflected wavelengths that we see; what appears black to us is an object which absorbs all the wavelengths. An object which appears white to us is reflecting all the wavelengths. So one of the most important criteria in color determination is ambient light. An object can drastically appear a different color by simply changing the ambient light conditions.
And don’t even get me started on trying to determine an object’s color using images and display monitors.
Our hobby’s reliance upon ‘color’ for identification is indeed just like what Wine states; a very bad joke. For stamps, there is only a single way that I know of that we will ever be able to identify a stamps’ true color; chemical molecular analysis. Doing anything ‘optical’ is tilting at windmills since it is common knowledge that inks change over time. For example, if you used a spectrophotometer and Fourier transform techniques to retrieve spectral information on a stamp today and then ran the same exact analysis in 10 years, you would get different results. And frankly even a chemical molecular analysis would change over time but at least the ink chemistry changes can be understood and predicted. The current challenge with a chemical molecular analysis would be to figure out a non-destructive test method.
Folks who study stamp color should stay the course in building reference collections until our hobby comes to grip with all the decades of misinformation that has been peddled. One day we will be able to accurately define and understand stamp colors but we are nowhere close yet.
Don
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re: COLOUR CHART FOR KGV AUSTRALIAN STAMPS
using Pantone, CMYK or RAL numbers for colours would be a better way to identify them, but then again, who is going to guarantee that Pantone 241 that matches a certain printing colour is still the same kind of pink as was used when the stamp was printed 100 years ago...
Login to Like
this post
re: COLOUR CHART FOR KGV AUSTRALIAN STAMPS
Colors are a nightmare but doing something like having scans of various colors in the same image can help. It is better than nothing.
Login to Like
this post
re: COLOUR CHART FOR KGV AUSTRALIAN STAMPS
Hi Al,
Relative comparisons do have some value but without any real baselines we are still lost in the weeds. Imagine getting a speeding ticket in your car based upon a relative comparison… policemen says “I do not know how fast he was really going but he was going faster than the other cars”. Yikes.
Determining colors are harder than determining speed. Women, for example, have far more cones in their eyes than men, so their color identification is superior to men. But none of us sees colors exactly the same.
I previously worked a lot with color identification including color matching; this is not a philatelic problem. Everyone feels confident they can ID a color. That is red, that is blue, etc.
But the truth is that when we go to the home improvement store and try to pick a color to paint their walls, the real challenge become apparent. After finally choosing a color we like, when we get home it never looks the same on the wall due to the ambient lighting conditions!
Don
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re: COLOUR CHART FOR KGV AUSTRALIAN STAMPS
I still would like to see a side by side image of carmine rose and rose (same stamp) as used on British Commonwealth stamps. (a topic posted recently).
I am not talking about color wheels, patches, etc and situations like comparing carmine rose from rose by a completely different printer (say BEP and DLR). If I see two images even though they may not have perfect color management, I can get a sense of how much red one stamp has versus another as an example.
The color names are useless.
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Member ACCC (Australian Commonwealth Collectors Club of NSW)
11 Apr 2018
05:00:52pm
re: COLOUR CHART FOR KGV AUSTRALIAN STAMPS
The stamp on the left is Carmine-Rose and the OS stamp is Rose.
Rob
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Member ACCC (Australian Commonwealth Collectors Club of NSW)
11 Apr 2018
05:06:53pm
re: COLOUR CHART FOR KGV AUSTRALIAN STAMPS
Hi Don
Wouldn't printer records of ink colour and shades used be accurate, regardless of colour degradation over the decades?
Login to Like
this post
re: COLOUR CHART FOR KGV AUSTRALIAN STAMPS
Hi Rob,
Perhaps.
As a 'car guy' I have a complete set of paint chips, from 5 different sources including Studebaker, for the cars I collect. They include the exact paint formulas and were used in the period by shops to mix and match the cars of the period. In the car hobby people easily spend $10,000 (US) or more just to paint their car and every tries very hard to make it an original color.
Trouble is, no one can mix these paints today. While paint manufacturers still produce lacquer auto paints, they are nothing like the paints used in the period. There are modern regulations which prevent this.
I assume the same holds true with the old ink formulas. For example, I can personally attest to the hidden dangers with aniline inks and dyes. While working my way through university back in the 1970s, I worked second shift dying cloth in a factory and handled aniline dye.
While it there was a longer history of 'bladder cancer clusters' with workers who handled aniline dye going back decades, they were no regulations at the time. A few years after I left college they passed laws outlawing aniline inks and dyes as a carcinogen. Too late for me and I have been battling bladder cancer for the last 4 years.
So I guess, if the formulas and raw ingredients can be mixed, that a new batch of original inks could be generated. Then you would have to replicate the original paper, get access to some old printing equipment, and make a few runs to demonstrate how the stamp originally appears back in the day.
Don
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Member ACCC (Australian Commonwealth Collectors Club of NSW)
12 Apr 2018
12:09:22am
re: COLOUR CHART FOR KGV AUSTRALIAN STAMPS
You made a good point, I didn't know the serious effect aniline has on a person's health.
Rob
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re: COLOUR CHART FOR KGV AUSTRALIAN STAMPS
Don, I had no idea aniline dyes were carcinogens. I am about halfway through a book titled Mauve, about the discovery and manufacture of that dye (color) by William Perkin -- book by Simon Garfield. The story of the aniline dyes is interesting, but I had no idea of the dangers. My wife is recovering from cancer, so the last two years has been an education for us concerning medical treatments. The medical profession is getting quite clever about treatment, so hoping you have a clever doctor or two on your side. At one point my wife was seeing four doctors for cancer and various complications. Lost track of the hours spent in waiting rooms.
The assignment of color to stamps is intriguing, and mercurial. For my Great Britain stamps I have two color columns, one listing Scott color, and the other with SG's take on the color. It is amusing to see how each catalogue describes stamps. I am still trying to get a handle on color, but I feel pretty sure I can distinguish Lake Red from Rose Red now, as well as a few other distinctions.
Cheers,
Wine
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like this post.
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re: COLOUR CHART FOR KGV AUSTRALIAN STAMPS
Hi Wine,
Sending thoughts and prayers to you and your wife. I sometimes think that the family of a cancer patient goes through as much, perhaps more, then the patient themselves. I am truly blessed with a great support system including family, friends, and medical caregivers. I am also blessed to have had good medical insurance since over the last 4 years I have managed to rake up $3 million in medical costs. I found life saving surgeons at Duke Cancer Center and when my surgical options ran out (metastasized Stage 4) I found a great medical oncologist who worked to get me approved for one of the new immunotherapy drugs. I have been on it for one year now and I get a full CT scan every 90 days. Over the last 6 months the immunotherapy has shrunk the affected lymph nodes and on Tuesday I met with the oncologist to review the last imaging. The word I got was “NDF” (No Disease Found)!
Considering that 4 previous doctors all told me that I had a 10-15% chance of living more than 6 months, my wife has now stopped planning what to do with the life insurance pay off and is thinking of new ways to knock me off. I am even slowly gaining confidence to start buying stamps (but hoping that I am not tempting fate!).
Duke has treated hundreds of bladder cancer patients and I was only the third one that had not been a smoker. This caused them to dig into my background and only after an extensive questioning of my work and life style experiences did they uncover the aniline dye connection. They gave me more information including ‘cancer clusters’ from the late 1800s in European dye houses. (Cancer clusters are a high number of cancer cases that occur in a group of people in a particular geographic area over a limited period of time.)
I totally understand your comment about waiting rooms. I now have over 200 medical procedure per year so one of the many great things that this experience has taught me is patience. I think that I am now a better person than I was pre-cancer.
Don
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re: COLOUR CHART FOR KGV AUSTRALIAN STAMPS
Hi to all
Thank you for all the very helpful information.
This is a great forum, everyone helps everyone.
Hi Wine, I will say some special prayers for you and your family.
Looks like I will have to start sorting and try imagining I am getting it right.
Thanks Rob for the scans.
As a gemmologist, I can resort to one idea, I view every stamp under a light that is corrected to daylight at Mid-day which is 5000 nanometres.
They other problem is my wife tells me I am obsessed with stamps, but she still encourages me, by buying everything that comes into the local opp shops, (thrift shops overseas)
Also I am going to buy a uv long & short wave lamp, so that will possibly help distinguish different re-actions.
Its a long work, but I will enjoy it.
Again thanks to all, for the fantastic advice
Regards
HOramakhet.
1 Member
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Login to Like.
Member ACCC (Australian Commonwealth Collectors Club of NSW)
12 Apr 2018
10:31:46pm
re: COLOUR CHART FOR KGV AUSTRALIAN STAMPS
Glad to help Horamakhet.
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re: COLOUR CHART FOR KGV AUSTRALIAN STAMPS
Hi Rob
Well I finally bought myself a uv long wave short wave lamp and it has other features as well.
Attached are the instructions printed in many languages.
I am sure that in the long run it will pay for itself
I also purchase the latest copy of the ACSC Kangaroo volume. Being in colour makes it so much easier to identify the different dies
Unfortunately, they were out of the latest George V pennies etc volume in colour.
I purchased it from Max Stern in Melbourne it cost $190.00, I have seen them advertised on the net for a lot more.
Regards
Horamakhet
Login to Like
this post
re: COLOUR CHART FOR KGV AUSTRALIAN STAMPS
try colorpix ...
https://colorpix.en.softonic.com/
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Member ACCC (Australian Commonwealth Collectors Club of NSW)
24 Apr 2018
10:50:23pm
re: COLOUR CHART FOR KGV AUSTRALIAN STAMPS
Hi Horamakhet
The Philalux 3 looks very interesting, I'll have to see if any are at this end. I am yet to buy the colour catalogues of the 'roo anf KGV.
Rob.
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Member ACCC (Australian Commonwealth Collectors Club of NSW)
24 Apr 2018
10:51:44pm
re: COLOUR CHART FOR KGV AUSTRALIAN STAMPS
Hi phos45
I'll download the colorpix and see how it goes.
Rob
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re: COLOUR CHART FOR KGV AUSTRALIAN STAMPS
Ho Phos45
The link does not work, It tells me it is no longer available
Regards
Horamakhe
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Member ACCC (Australian Commonwealth Collectors Club of NSW)
29 Apr 2018
07:37:28am
re: COLOUR CHART FOR KGV AUSTRALIAN STAMPS
I just tested it, it still works for me.
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