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Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
King Bhumibol, Rama 9, (the Rama designation was given to kings of the present Chakri dynasty with consecutive numbers starting from 1782), reigned from 1946 until he died in 2016. The present king is his son and takes the name Rama 10. King Bhumibol became a very popular head of state and has now been designated Bhumibol the Great.
The definitive stamps were issued in 10 series over Rama 9's reign. A comparison with GB's Queen Elizabeth II who was born a year earlier but came to the throne 6 years later is interesting when it comes to stamp issues. QE2 had just two series, the Wildings and long running Machins. The extra series makes it a bit simpler and easier for collectors of the Thai issues. I am just sorting the 7th series and using Album Easy to make some album pages. I will show these off when I finish. I hope a visit to the Christmas Bangkok stamp fair will fill in the gaps.
The first 6 series are fairly simple. The very first 1947-1949 issue of 10 values is interesting as the country's name is shown as Siam rather than Thailand. The country had first switched from Siam to Thailand on its stamps in 1940. The people of Siam had long called themselves Thai and the change was probably due to the rise in nationalism seen across the world during this period. The switch back was probably political pressure from Britain who did want Thailand to treated as an Axis power because of its allying with Japan during the war.
By the 2nd series issue of 14 values starting in 1951 had a fairly similar design and was printed by the same printer, Waterlow, as the 1st, but the country's name returned to being Thailand. Again, it was probably political with the US seeing a strong (often military) Thai government as being a bulwark against communism in the then Cold War. In 1961 De La Rue reprinted 10 of the values with a perforation change.
Also, in 1961 De La Rue started printing a 3rd series which ended up having 18 values a much larger design. In 1963 the Government Printing Bureau of Japan's Ministry of Finance started printing a small design in a 4th series with 19 values. Series 2 to 4 overlap each over on issuing dates.
The Japanese printer started printing the 5th series with a slightly larger design, and my favorite, in 1972 with 17 values. The Bank of Finland's printing house repeated 4 of the values with a perforation change in 1976. The two printings of the 40 baht value which has a higher collector price does cause a lot of confusion on eBay as to which one is which.
The 6th series sees the return of De La Rue as the printer in 1973 with 8 values and a new small design. Starting in 1980 Harrison & Sons reprinted 3 of the values and added one new value, 50 satang. These had both a perforation change and a different watermark.
The 7th series gets a lot more interesting and a lot harder. With design similar to the 5th series starting in 1980 and ending in 1987, we have five different printers and 22 values. The printers were Enschedé of Holland, Harrison, Waddington, and Leigh-Mardon all of the UK, and the Japanese Ministry of Finance. We have perforation and watermark changes along with Harrison changing a colour slightly between two printings and the Japanese starting off the 2 baht value with two colours while the printings by three of the following printers used a single colour. The first die used by the Japanese had a flaw so a new die gives us something else to look for. Waddington gave us the first phosphor overprint.
You will find plenty of overprints and surcharges to add to your collection in these first seven series and hardly any of the stamps have overly high catalogue list prices. I will write about the 8th to 10th series later when I tackle them. Although my cut-off date for Thai stamps is 1983, I will add the later definitive series to my collection.
I hope this is of interest and may have piqued it enough to make you, especially the Machin collectors, look at these royal definitives from a different country. The illustration above is the cover of Derek Bingham’s wonderful study of these stamps and is available from the Thailand Philatelic Society’s UK website at http://www.thailandphilsoc.org.uk/publications.html
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Well I finished sorting out the Series 7 Rama 9 definitives and putting them in Album Easy pages. (Thanks Clive for a splendid program.) It took three pages and you can see them below.
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So 38 stamps plus one oddity. I placed them in value order and then date issued except in one case where I wanted to get two issues with a colour change from the same printer side-by-side.
If you do collect this series most are not particularly uncommon but look out for a couple.
The lowest value (25 satang pale red) although having a catalogue value in pennies doesn't show up that much in mixtures although 10M were printed. I think it was a value without a job to do.
The 50 satang olive values printed by Enschedé and Harrison with a total quantity of 150M are not that common mint. Many ended up being overprinted with a new value. This even more so with the 1.50 baht orange where all bar ~500,000 of the 50M printing were overprinted with new values.
The first Japanese printing of the 2 baht was only 5M and three other printers later printed another 290M stamps. The Japanese printing is the only one of these using two colours. The others are in a single colour. It is probably worth more mint or used than the catalogue value suggests. (It's also why my copy above has a rounded corner. It was the only one I had
.)
The die 1 issues from Japan of the 3, 5 and 6 baht stamps have fairly high mint catalogue values but as with all of this series used prices are low.
Hope you enjoy looking through your stock. Hopefully I will do the following three series next.
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Well I'm working through the last three series, (8th, 9th and 10th), of King Rama 9 definitives and it's quite interesting. Although I had quite a range of all three mainly from incoming business correspondence, I still find I'm short of quite a few values, especially the last series.
With the last three we run into multiple printers, perforations, coloured threads in the paper and still some watermarks. At one point we even find a small experiment with self-adhesives. In the 1988 8th series the king is shown in the uniform of the Royal Guards regiment. In the 1996 9th series the king wears the uniform of the Royal Thai Navy while in the 10th and last series of 2010 the king is in Thai Air Force uniform, so all three arms of the military get covered.
I will try and cover them in separate posts as I put them in album pages but if you collect them you may need a watermark detector, a perforation gauge, a UV light source and a good magnifier.
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Well I'm long overdue to pick up the series of definitives from the reign of King Bhumibol of Thailand, the 9th king in the Chakri dynasty hence often referred to as King Rama 9. The previous post covered the 7th series and at this point I should have already explained, but didn't, that I am writing about the series of definitives with the king's picture on them. There are some individual definitive stamps at whatever the standard letter mail rate was at the time of issue, but I'm leaving these alone. I'm looking at the series as Thailand's answer to the GB Wilding and Machin designs of QE2.
My thanks to Clive yet again for the Album Easy software. It makes so much possible.
Below I will start with my pages of the 8th series where the king is in the uniform of the Royal Guards army regiment. There are gaps in my collection because until recently I stuck to my 1983 cut-off date so didn't collect when they were current. There were 5 foreign printers used to produce this series but individual printers are distinguishable in both mint and used stamps. The hardest ones to pick are the use of two different plates by the Japanese government printer. For some reason in 1994 they used a new plate, but in years either side of 1994 they used the original plate. The way I pick the plates is show on my second and third pages. There doesn't seem to be any outstanding rarities in the series although you will notice I have no examples of either printing of the 25 baht value which was printed in quantities of 3M and 2M respectively.
Things will start to get more interesting with the next, 9th, series.
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Been a while, Danny!
Happy to see you are back to posting these!
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Many thanks Musicman. Been out at the postal museum here today buying stamps. Hopefully the next 9th series will be up very soon.
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Great educational series Danny. I really appreciate the effort.
rrr...
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Thank you Danny for the great post! I love this kind of stuff!
larry
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Thanks to all who like these posts. I even managed to fill in a few of the gaps yesterday at the Samsen Nai post office and museum. There are two weekend markets that attract small stamp dealers. One is at the this post office which also has the Thai postal museum and the offices of the Philatelic Association of Thailand and the other is outside the main GPO building. The latter hasn't had dealers for a while because of Covid restrictions. A link to the museum is below.
https://www.museumthailand.com/en/museum ...
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Well I did managed to fill the gaps including some of those on the pages below. I'm up to the 9th series with the King in the Royal Thai Navy uniform. This was an attractive long running series with multiple printers. A UV lamp does come in handy identifying some of the printers. What I have noticed is with this and the next series we get more colour changelings and washed out colours. I know for sure some of these are due to exposure to sunlight, but some may be because of fugitive inks.
p.s. Apologies as I could have done these scans at a slightly higher resolution.
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Well I have reached the 10th and last definitive series of the late King Bhumibol, Rama 9. 9 because he was the 9th king in the Chakri dynesty. His son is now Rama 10. Many thought the 10th series wouldn't happen as the king was already in poor health before it was issued. It follows the previous two series in completing the king being shown in the uniform of all three Thai military services. This one shows him in the uniform of the Royal Thai Air Force.
Now I started this thread with the 7th series so I may go back to the beginning and show my pages (again a big thank you to Clive for his software) for the first 6 series. The 10th series was issued when the use of stamps had already become just a small fraction of what it had been in the past. Collectors play a bigger role in the sales of stamps so for the first time we see souvenir sheets of definitive stamps. Another change we see with this series are inks that are more susceptible to being 'washed out'. From experience sunlight seems the worse culprit.
Only two printers for this series, Cartor of France and Thai British Security Printing of Thailand. They use different perforation sizes so can be identified fairl easily.
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Thanks for posting this study of the portrait stamps for King Bhumipol. It was very interesting. I really liked your postings about your visits to acquire the stamps as well!
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Thank you Jerrel.
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I feel a bit guilty starting this thread at the 7th definitive series of King Bhumibol, Rama 9. The reason I did this was at the time I posted it I was working on my album pages for this series. It was also because the 7th series crossed over the cut-off date for my Thailand collection which is 1983. The 1st to 6th series I had already made pages for. The earlier series are far simpler to collect and none are hard to find or overly expensive is used condition. I will start a new thread covering these earlier issues. I hope you enjoy it.
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King Bhumibol, Rama 9, (the Rama designation was given to kings of the present Chakri dynasty with consecutive numbers starting from 1782), reigned from 1946 until he died in 2016. The present king is his son and takes the name Rama 10. King Bhumibol became a very popular head of state and has now been designated Bhumibol the Great.
The definitive stamps were issued in 10 series over Rama 9's reign. A comparison with GB's Queen Elizabeth II who was born a year earlier but came to the throne 6 years later is interesting when it comes to stamp issues. QE2 had just two series, the Wildings and long running Machins. The extra series makes it a bit simpler and easier for collectors of the Thai issues. I am just sorting the 7th series and using Album Easy to make some album pages. I will show these off when I finish. I hope a visit to the Christmas Bangkok stamp fair will fill in the gaps.
The first 6 series are fairly simple. The very first 1947-1949 issue of 10 values is interesting as the country's name is shown as Siam rather than Thailand. The country had first switched from Siam to Thailand on its stamps in 1940. The people of Siam had long called themselves Thai and the change was probably due to the rise in nationalism seen across the world during this period. The switch back was probably political pressure from Britain who did want Thailand to treated as an Axis power because of its allying with Japan during the war.
By the 2nd series issue of 14 values starting in 1951 had a fairly similar design and was printed by the same printer, Waterlow, as the 1st, but the country's name returned to being Thailand. Again, it was probably political with the US seeing a strong (often military) Thai government as being a bulwark against communism in the then Cold War. In 1961 De La Rue reprinted 10 of the values with a perforation change.
Also, in 1961 De La Rue started printing a 3rd series which ended up having 18 values a much larger design. In 1963 the Government Printing Bureau of Japan's Ministry of Finance started printing a small design in a 4th series with 19 values. Series 2 to 4 overlap each over on issuing dates.
The Japanese printer started printing the 5th series with a slightly larger design, and my favorite, in 1972 with 17 values. The Bank of Finland's printing house repeated 4 of the values with a perforation change in 1976. The two printings of the 40 baht value which has a higher collector price does cause a lot of confusion on eBay as to which one is which.
The 6th series sees the return of De La Rue as the printer in 1973 with 8 values and a new small design. Starting in 1980 Harrison & Sons reprinted 3 of the values and added one new value, 50 satang. These had both a perforation change and a different watermark.
The 7th series gets a lot more interesting and a lot harder. With design similar to the 5th series starting in 1980 and ending in 1987, we have five different printers and 22 values. The printers were Enschedé of Holland, Harrison, Waddington, and Leigh-Mardon all of the UK, and the Japanese Ministry of Finance. We have perforation and watermark changes along with Harrison changing a colour slightly between two printings and the Japanese starting off the 2 baht value with two colours while the printings by three of the following printers used a single colour. The first die used by the Japanese had a flaw so a new die gives us something else to look for. Waddington gave us the first phosphor overprint.
You will find plenty of overprints and surcharges to add to your collection in these first seven series and hardly any of the stamps have overly high catalogue list prices. I will write about the 8th to 10th series later when I tackle them. Although my cut-off date for Thai stamps is 1983, I will add the later definitive series to my collection.
I hope this is of interest and may have piqued it enough to make you, especially the Machin collectors, look at these royal definitives from a different country. The illustration above is the cover of Derek Bingham’s wonderful study of these stamps and is available from the Thailand Philatelic Society’s UK website at http://www.thailandphilsoc.org.uk/publications.html
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re: The Definitive Stamps of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej
Well I finished sorting out the Series 7 Rama 9 definitives and putting them in Album Easy pages. (Thanks Clive for a splendid program.) It took three pages and you can see them below.
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re: The Definitive Stamps of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej
So 38 stamps plus one oddity. I placed them in value order and then date issued except in one case where I wanted to get two issues with a colour change from the same printer side-by-side.
If you do collect this series most are not particularly uncommon but look out for a couple.
The lowest value (25 satang pale red) although having a catalogue value in pennies doesn't show up that much in mixtures although 10M were printed. I think it was a value without a job to do.
The 50 satang olive values printed by Enschedé and Harrison with a total quantity of 150M are not that common mint. Many ended up being overprinted with a new value. This even more so with the 1.50 baht orange where all bar ~500,000 of the 50M printing were overprinted with new values.
The first Japanese printing of the 2 baht was only 5M and three other printers later printed another 290M stamps. The Japanese printing is the only one of these using two colours. The others are in a single colour. It is probably worth more mint or used than the catalogue value suggests. (It's also why my copy above has a rounded corner. It was the only one I had .)
The die 1 issues from Japan of the 3, 5 and 6 baht stamps have fairly high mint catalogue values but as with all of this series used prices are low.
Hope you enjoy looking through your stock. Hopefully I will do the following three series next.
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re: The Definitive Stamps of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej
Well I'm working through the last three series, (8th, 9th and 10th), of King Rama 9 definitives and it's quite interesting. Although I had quite a range of all three mainly from incoming business correspondence, I still find I'm short of quite a few values, especially the last series.
With the last three we run into multiple printers, perforations, coloured threads in the paper and still some watermarks. At one point we even find a small experiment with self-adhesives. In the 1988 8th series the king is shown in the uniform of the Royal Guards regiment. In the 1996 9th series the king wears the uniform of the Royal Thai Navy while in the 10th and last series of 2010 the king is in Thai Air Force uniform, so all three arms of the military get covered.
I will try and cover them in separate posts as I put them in album pages but if you collect them you may need a watermark detector, a perforation gauge, a UV light source and a good magnifier.
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re: The Definitive Stamps of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej
Well I'm long overdue to pick up the series of definitives from the reign of King Bhumibol of Thailand, the 9th king in the Chakri dynasty hence often referred to as King Rama 9. The previous post covered the 7th series and at this point I should have already explained, but didn't, that I am writing about the series of definitives with the king's picture on them. There are some individual definitive stamps at whatever the standard letter mail rate was at the time of issue, but I'm leaving these alone. I'm looking at the series as Thailand's answer to the GB Wilding and Machin designs of QE2.
My thanks to Clive yet again for the Album Easy software. It makes so much possible.
Below I will start with my pages of the 8th series where the king is in the uniform of the Royal Guards army regiment. There are gaps in my collection because until recently I stuck to my 1983 cut-off date so didn't collect when they were current. There were 5 foreign printers used to produce this series but individual printers are distinguishable in both mint and used stamps. The hardest ones to pick are the use of two different plates by the Japanese government printer. For some reason in 1994 they used a new plate, but in years either side of 1994 they used the original plate. The way I pick the plates is show on my second and third pages. There doesn't seem to be any outstanding rarities in the series although you will notice I have no examples of either printing of the 25 baht value which was printed in quantities of 3M and 2M respectively.
Things will start to get more interesting with the next, 9th, series.
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re: The Definitive Stamps of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej
Been a while, Danny!
Happy to see you are back to posting these!
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re: The Definitive Stamps of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej
Many thanks Musicman. Been out at the postal museum here today buying stamps. Hopefully the next 9th series will be up very soon.
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re: The Definitive Stamps of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej
Great educational series Danny. I really appreciate the effort.
rrr...
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re: The Definitive Stamps of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej
Thank you Danny for the great post! I love this kind of stuff!
larry
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re: The Definitive Stamps of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej
Thanks to all who like these posts. I even managed to fill in a few of the gaps yesterday at the Samsen Nai post office and museum. There are two weekend markets that attract small stamp dealers. One is at the this post office which also has the Thai postal museum and the offices of the Philatelic Association of Thailand and the other is outside the main GPO building. The latter hasn't had dealers for a while because of Covid restrictions. A link to the museum is below.
https://www.museumthailand.com/en/museum ...
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re: The Definitive Stamps of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej
Well I did managed to fill the gaps including some of those on the pages below. I'm up to the 9th series with the King in the Royal Thai Navy uniform. This was an attractive long running series with multiple printers. A UV lamp does come in handy identifying some of the printers. What I have noticed is with this and the next series we get more colour changelings and washed out colours. I know for sure some of these are due to exposure to sunlight, but some may be because of fugitive inks.
p.s. Apologies as I could have done these scans at a slightly higher resolution.
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re: The Definitive Stamps of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej
Well I have reached the 10th and last definitive series of the late King Bhumibol, Rama 9. 9 because he was the 9th king in the Chakri dynesty. His son is now Rama 10. Many thought the 10th series wouldn't happen as the king was already in poor health before it was issued. It follows the previous two series in completing the king being shown in the uniform of all three Thai military services. This one shows him in the uniform of the Royal Thai Air Force.
Now I started this thread with the 7th series so I may go back to the beginning and show my pages (again a big thank you to Clive for his software) for the first 6 series. The 10th series was issued when the use of stamps had already become just a small fraction of what it had been in the past. Collectors play a bigger role in the sales of stamps so for the first time we see souvenir sheets of definitive stamps. Another change we see with this series are inks that are more susceptible to being 'washed out'. From experience sunlight seems the worse culprit.
Only two printers for this series, Cartor of France and Thai British Security Printing of Thailand. They use different perforation sizes so can be identified fairl easily.
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re: The Definitive Stamps of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej
Thanks for posting this study of the portrait stamps for King Bhumipol. It was very interesting. I really liked your postings about your visits to acquire the stamps as well!
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re: The Definitive Stamps of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej
Thank you Jerrel.
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re: The Definitive Stamps of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej
I feel a bit guilty starting this thread at the 7th definitive series of King Bhumibol, Rama 9. The reason I did this was at the time I posted it I was working on my album pages for this series. It was also because the 7th series crossed over the cut-off date for my Thailand collection which is 1983. The 1st to 6th series I had already made pages for. The earlier series are far simpler to collect and none are hard to find or overly expensive is used condition. I will start a new thread covering these earlier issues. I hope you enjoy it.
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