Plate 163

General details

This is an interesting plate for two reasons. Firstly, many of the impressions were repaired by Re-entry as shown in the table below. Use the navigation menu to drill down to individual impressions. The second interesting point is that 163 (along with 157) was brought back into use for a short burst of printing between the 28 July 1854 and 11 August 1854. First impression after looking at the print record is that no plate could have produced more than about 6,200 sheets, and some produced significantly less. However, looking more closely shows that some printers do not have a print figure for Saturday, which is a tell-tale sign that he was on late shift work. He would not start work on the Saturday as it would mean working on into the Sabbath. So even though these plates were at press night and day during this period, the print totals would not have exceeded 12,000 sheets. It would seem that some running repairs were made to 163 during this time at press so a perforated 163 in either state is a beast worth keeping.

Plates 157 and 163 are not found with perforation variety S&S 5, which closely followed the spurt in production mentioned above. Interestingly, plate 155 can be found with the variety even though that plate was defaced 24 August 1854. It must have been kept on press a few days longer than the other two plates.