The King George VI stamps from Jamaica were printed from 1938 until about 1952, but there were some later printings even after the death of King George VI. Two different printers were involved in the production of the stamps, De La Rue, and Waterlow and Sons. If you have studied any other King George VI sets, you will know to expect some variation in terms of the perforation and the colors in the De La Rue issues. The Waterlow issues tend to differ primarily in terms of the paper and gum characteristics, but there are some perforation changes here also. Unfortunately there are lots of printings, so it is virtually impossible to absolutely identify every known printing. Although I tried, some - where all of the traits are the same could be more likely a best guess.

The reference used for the stamps is "Study Paper No. 15 - Jamaica" which was published by the King George VI Collectors Society in 1999. The paper was written by Hugh James, and incorporates the Crown Agents report with Potter & Shelton and stamps from the author's collection. Also included are the other stamps from Jamaica and coverage of the many flaws that exist.

Based on the Study Paper listings, I created an Excel spreadsheet showing the printings and their corresponding catalog numbers. This also includes information from both the Study Paper and Potter & Shelton listings. This information is available for download below.

The pages are from my collection, and are identified by the Commonwealth, Gibbons, and Scott numbers in that order. The page images were scanned in a larger size and at a higher resolution so you can more easily see the details used in viewing them. Feel free to select the page and let it download to your screen and save it to your hard drive for viewing. If you are using a PC, selecting the page will typically open it in Microsoft Photo Viewer (or whatever you are using as your default). From there you can enlarge the size for more close-up viewing. If you are using a phone - go find a PC or a Mac. The images are 1200 pixels wide and you will go mad trying to view them on your phone.

Please be patient if it takes a few minutes for each page to load.

This article was written to help you identify your stamps.
Please feel free to ask a question, or suggest a correction.