SET VII - Rotary Press Perf 10 Coils - Single-line Watermark of 1915 The previous six sets had been printed using the flat plate method. This was not the most efficient method of printing, and in late 1914 a "new" method called rotary press printing was employed in the production of coil stamps only. These coil stamps, perforated 10, printed on single-line USPS watermarked paper, using the rotary press method are listed as Scott numbers 448 through 450 and 452 through 459, there is no listing for Scott 451. Why Rotary Press? The first coil stamps were privately perforated from imperforate sheets printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. The reader will remember that these sheets contained four 10 x 10 stamp panes of 100 stamps, meaning the overall sheet was 20 x 20. The private perforating companies, e.g. Schermack, Brinkerhoff and U.S. Automatic would, after adding their private perforations, cut the sheet into strips of 20 stamps, which they would then paste together, hence the term “paste-up pair”, to make rolls of, e.g. 500 stamps, which were then sold to coil machine vendors, including the Post Office. The government, being the frugal entity that it is, noticed that they could produce their own coils and save a few dollars. This meant, of course, that civil servants would need to do the time-consuming work of pasting the strips of 20 stamps together. A better method of creating the rolls of 500 or more stamps was needed. The offset method provided a way of printing continuously, but the government decided that engraving was such an effective deterrent to counterfeiters that a method which did not employ engraving was simply not suitable. Since the government had been using the rotary press method successfully on Revenue stamps for some time, and the rotary press could in theory print sheets of any length up to the length of the roll of paper stock, it was decided to give that printing method a shot on coil stamps for regular issue. Next: Set VIII No Watermark - Perf 10 of 1916  A Guide to the Washington Franklins 1908 · 1909 · 1910 · 1910 Perf 8.5 · 1912 · 1914 · 1916 · 1916 Coils · 1917 · 1918 · 1919 · 1919 Shanghai

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