FORMAT INTERNATIONAL SECURITY PRINTERS LTD. ARCHIVE

Information and Reference of What was Found in the Archive

Between the years of 1967 and 1989 the firm called "Format International Security Printers Ltd." printed stamps for many of the nations in the British Commonwealth areas and also supplied many foreign countries. The British Crown Agents were their largest and main customer. As is standard practice with all the major stamp printing firms, production and printing of postage stamps is on large uncut sheets of as many panes as sound layout design dictates. This is usually panes of four. The individual panes are separated from each other by vertical and horizontal spaces (known as "gutters" in the trade) which provide the space needed for cutting the sheet into its separate panes for final packaging and shipment. Depending on the size of the stamps these panes usually have twenty to one hundred stamps on them.

For detailed information on uncut press sheets please visit this page.
A HISTORY OF UNCUT PRESS SHEETS

For their own reference needs, Format Printers set aside original uncut sheets in their archives. Judging by the auction sales and known private purchases when the liquidators sold the archive, it is very doubtful that very many of the issued and unissued stamp sheets were stored in quantities of more than five to ten sheets. A major portion existed in quantities of one to three sheets. In most cases only one uncut sheet represented an issued set of stamps. If an issue dealt with a member of the British Royalty, the number of uncut sheets ranged from three to seven in most cases. This tends to conflict with Scott catalogs statements for instance on the "LEADERS OF THE WORLD" issues by various British Commonwealth countries stating "Large quantities of some Leaders of the World issues were sold at a fraction of face value when the printer was liquidated". In comparison of the millions of stamps that were issued for these sets, and the amounts found in the archive, "Large quantities" is a bit of an overstatement, would you so agree?

Issued stamps were NEVER sent in uncut sheets to any of the various country issuing agencies. ALL that existed were stored in the Format Printers archive. Being to large for standard storage equipment, The full uncut sheets were folded and refolded before storing them. Damage to many of the sheets was considerable. This was not considered a problem by the printers though because they had no intention of EVER selling their archive. Because of their large size, uncut sheets cannot be mounted in albums. In the early 90's when the archive was sold, dealers and collectors knew that they could be mounted and framed for display, but considered that even three days of exposure to sunlight can fade the colors. We know now that you CAN display them with the proper protections, basically being UV protective glass or plastic. We know now that many of the full uncut sheets HAVE been broken up into gutter units, se-tenant pairs, imprint strips, color guide strips, etc., which are now available to the public market and are extremely collectible and many are VERY valuable as many are one of a kind. Canada and the United States have now been selling uncut press sheet for years to the public in limited quantities. Some sell for hundreds of dollars. Other countries are beginning to follow suite and collectibility of them is rising every year. They are issuing them in "limited" numbers of 5,000 or 10,000 etc. So what if there are only a few or maybe just one in existance. What would that be worth? A thousand? Two thousand? Ten thousand? The intact uncut sheets from the Format printers archive are the rarist in the world! Exceeding even the 1935 U.S. Farley sheets!

In 1988-89 in a bitter takeover fight, A new set of shareholders took over management of the Format International Security Printers Ltd.. The displaced shareholders accused the new management (one of whom was the British Crown Agents manager) of creating deliberate printing errors and secretly selling them to the public as great rarities without informing the public that they were deliberately made. The Micheal Jackson Invert and Elvis Presley invert are two good examples. The question was were they deceiving the public which would have been a crime. Basically it came down to them being found not guilty of all charges. Yes they did create SOME "errors" and yes they DID present them to the public BUT they DID imply that they were made by the printer FOR COLLECTORS. The quantities were limited. NOT ONE of them were in the archive. Many "made for collector" stamps are produced by MANY countries in the millions. The issuing countries have a population that would NEVER use them all in a lifetime! What has happened to many of these "errors" is that some shady dealers are still to this day trying to sell them as TRUE error stamps and using deceitful tactics not stating that they were made for collectors by the printer, lying about their rarity, and trying to convince non-savvy collectors that they are a great investments. To these dealers I say, "you suck!".
So, after the trial apologies were made to all the accused parties. The British Government paid all the costs for the trial. But sadly the firm went bankrupt. So a government appointed liquidator was given the task of selling the Format Printers archive and the actual process was turned over to Christies/Robson Lowe which was and is a highly reputable auction house in London.
You can read more on the trial here:
trial

The sales of the archival materials spanned over several years. The first sections of the archive were sold through private treaties. Much of the sorting and organization of the different sections of the archive that were sold privately was done by Keith Low (unrelated to Robson Lowe).
The first section sold privately were the sheets (presumably uncut press sheets) of mint stamps, (which inadvertently included some unissued variations). They were sold to Alan Grant of Rushstamps in the UK. We believe some of the material from the archive he still has and is selling. Here is the link to their website. RUSHSTAMPS
The remainder of the mint stamp sheets was sold to Robert W. Lyman presumably in two to three sections. In turn he sold portions to George Alevizos in Los Angeles and some to Kasimir Bileski. Portions of the material handled by Mr. Alevizos were featured in his various auctions through his website and some are still present today! Here is the link to his website.
GEORGE ALEVIZOS
And here is a link to his ebay auctions.
GEORGE ALEVIZOS EBAY AUCTIONS
In 1993 Christie's had a major auction sale in New York of the archival material. Roger West, owner of Avion Stamps, was one of the major buyers of the material so it is said. He is still selling items from the archive on his website. Here is the link.
AVION THEMATICS
The materials held as evidence for the trial apparently have been retained and is available on the market. The late Clive Feigenbaum's son Jonathan Feigenbaum is carrying on the business and has many archival items for sale via his website. Here is the link.
STAMPDILE LIMITED
Another site that is selling Format items is Justwendy Thematics. Here is the link.
JUSTWENDY THEMATICS
There is rumor (more research needed) stated that there was a different stock from the Format Printers Archive which consisted essentially of Belize and Lesotho material. Mr. Clive Feigenbaum was very vague about this stock but insisted it was separate from the remaining Format stock. Assuming this means it was retained outside of all sales of the archive. Knowledge of its whereabouts is unknown at present.

More knowledge of the archival material seems to have been presented by Kasimir Bileski, A world renowned stamp dealer from Winnipeg, Canada, than any other person associated with the stamp market and the Format International Security Printers Archive. He was most famous for the discovery of the Canadian Seaway invert. He was one of the biggest buyers of the archive of Waterlow and Son, and of the Royal Collections of Egypt. I had the privilege of dealing with him many years ago and he gave me some VERY beautiful and rare issues. You can read about him here.
Kasimir Bileski's Biography
Sadly Mr Bileski is not with us now.

In 1990 he began buying the Format Archive material from Christie's in private sales and purchased ALL of the unissued varieties section. He purchased more at a Christie's auction in March 1993. The final auction for all the remaining Format material was held by Christie's/Robson Lowe on July 14th, 1995 in which he purchased some of the Commonwealth to fill in his previous buys and the final lot of the day, a very large grouping involving all the foreign country printings including Liberia, Haiti, and other Latin American countries, plus all else. He did an enormous amount of research on what he had purchased from 1990 to 2004. Many of the uncut sheets he broke up in such a way as to display them in an album. Many of them are one of a kind. Many souvenir sheet uncut sheets he cut into pairs creating as he liked to call them, "instant rarities of the first degree!". An example are the Diana Royal Wedding souvenir sheets in pairs. Perforation varieties, proofs, color trials, essays, progressive color trials, unissued, and much more he discovered and wrote about. Sadly , he has passed on before he could finish his research, as it seems we as collector/researchers all do. His daughter, Jeannette, has kindly presented his estate through numerous auctions to the stamp collecting community. The problem now though, is that it is being broken up and sold in smaller and smaller lots as I write this. It is being skattered and sold and many of the items that are in the extreme rarity class are being sold with no knowledge of what they really are! Items that should be sold for hundreds if not thousands of dollars are being sold from anywhere in the range of a couple dollars to fifty dollars. This is why I am presenting this and the following webpages to try and help the stamp collecting community understand and gain knowledge of what was in the archive. Many of you collectors and dealers will soon find out that you may have an item or items in your possession that is MUCH more valuable than you realize. Waterlow and son was inventoried extensively and rarity is known. The Royal Collection of Egypt the same and prices are in accordance. The Format International Security Printers Archive has not been so extensively inventoried. Maybe because of the scandal. Maybe because they were around for only a short time. Maybe because they are "modern" issues. The stamps issued during their short time have enormous historical significance though. The Royal Weddings, Discovery of America, Olympics, Special events, Beautiful topicals, Art, all were in the archive. This is why the research must be done. Already some information and or stamps and combinations of them have been lost forever. Let us try to preserve what is left before it is too late.

Quantities of many of the items remains a mystery. Certain sources of the material do not wish to reveal information of this nature because of fears of devaluing their stock. Obviously this means they are holding LARGE quantities of certain issues and trying to sell them at OVERINFLATED prices. An example would be the 1987 Saint Vincent Royal Ruby Wedding issue with inverted frames or the 1985 Elvis Presley stamps with inverted frames. Produced for promotional reasons but claimed to be true errors by a few bad sellers. THOUSANDS were produced! Anyone who invested 100's or 1,000's of dollars in them I am sad to say were duped. They are worth $5-10.00 a set at most. Anyone trying to sell them for large amounts should be shunned in ALL dealings. Also many of the regular issued stamp sets from some countries were reprinted several times creating a LARGE holding.
Issues which may have this problem have been noted with the generalized statements made from Scott Catalog and Stanley Gibbons Catalogs. PLEASE be aware of these items BEFORE investing large sums of money on them.

UPDATE:

We are finding that many sets of progressive color proofs, imperfs, SPECIMEN overprinted and "error" stamps have limits in quantities that were printed. We now have printers documentation on orders and we are acquiring a large portion of the police evidence stock stored for over 20 years which is verifying the practices used for the printing of this kind of material. Good news is that there are NOT millions as some would like collectors to believe. Basically only 1,000 to 5,000 sets produced for most issues that fall in the category depending on type. Examples being:
1,000 sets imperforate SPECIMEN overprinted
3,000 sets of progressive color proofs
As time moves on more sources will help by entering in true quantities and/or changing selling practices and/or destroying a given amount of the panes usually of regular stamps thus ridding us of the large quantities stored.
We are finding that even the varieties of many LOW (Leaders of the World) issues are limited. Yes, the regular stamps for many automobiles and trains sets etc; were reprinted (some several times) but evidence is pointing toward the varieties as in progressives etc; NOT being reprinted or only the imperfs being reprinted still in the original limits. Good news for collectors of these!

The following links will be to pages showing each of the individual countries that the "Format International Security Printers Ltd." printed stamps for and what stamps were printed by them. Each page will be describing different stamps and souvenir sheets found in the archive.
Quantities that were found in the archive and/or exist where available.

Some have stories to tell of WHY they were in the archive. Some are a mystery. I do have some for sale myself. If I do, it will be linked to the appropriate page in my store. Questions and comments and/or more information is always welcome. Enjoy the show!

JLowe
owner and webmaster of Golowe's Collector Stamps

All Content Copyright © 2011 Golowe's Collector Stamps, All Rights Reserved

PLEASE BE AWARE THAT SOME OF THE FOLLOWING PAGES HAVE A LOT OF IMAGES AND NEED TIME TO DOWNLOAD. PLEASE BE PATIENT.

Links to my reference pages for stamps printed by The Format International Security Printers and items found in the archive.