The King George VI Seychelles stamps were printed from 1938 until about 1952. Unlike most of the other British Colony stamps of the time period, these stamps were printed by Harrison & Sons using a photogravure process. It must have been cheaper because the result is not very good compared to the other printers that were used. You should notice that some of the stamps were printed on chalk coated paper and some were not. A fine piece of silver rubbed lightly will produce a pencil-like line. I use one of the corners outside the design to test for chalk paper. One other strange attribute of the Harrison printed stamps is that it is almost impossible to remove a hinge from the stamps. As a result, you will see NH stamps and stamps with hinge remnants, but a LH stamp is harder to find.

The pages were created using information presented by Ken Holt in the King George VI Collectors Society issue number 117 based on Frank Saunders collection. If you are interested in sorting these issues, I have attached my Excel spreadsheet to this page. It combines the works of Ken Holt with Potter & Shelton and H.V. Farmer so you can get all of their input on the Seychelles issues. You will also find David Studd's Crown Agents report attached for download. I do not have permission to offer this report but have been unable to contact David since his website closed. So I assume it is okay to offer it here.

The pages are from my collection, and are identified by the Commonwealth, Gibbons and Scott numbers. Please note the empty space for the 75c 1949 printing. I have been unable to find one. It should be on chalk paper but with white gum rather than the brownish gum of the early printings.

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.