Collecting Plate Number Coils

The daily mail can be very discouraging to a stamp collector - especially a beginner: for a stamp collector, the use of printed meters or postage-paid permits is almost certainly even worse than the use of the same definitive stamps over and over again. While it is true that there is no area of the hobby that does not have its adherents, and they are often quite passionate, if you're a stamp collector you want to collect STAMPS, not meters.

Stamp collectors, strictly defined, collect stamps, and the last stamps you found on your mail were probably on Christmas cards that you received. If they weren't Christmas stamps, they were probably definitive stamps, and often coil stamps.

What's a stamp collector to do, now that postally used commemorative stamps are getting so hard to find?

There is a lot of excitement now about plate number coils. Coil stamps have small numbers spaced along the bottom of the strip of stamps to show what plate was used in the printing - this number is referred to as the "plate number," and stamps bearing plate numbers are known as "plate number coils."

Depending upon what type of printing press was used, the plate numbers may appear on every 24th, 48th or 52d stamp. Look sharp and use a magnifier if necessary; the plate numbers are very small and sometimes are very lightly printed. The custom is to collect either single PNCs (the common abbreviation for plate number coils) or strips of three or five stamps, with the numbered stamp in the middle. Searching for all the plate numbers that were used for specific coil stamps, and indeed all coil stamps that have them, can be a lengthy but very rewarding pursuit - just the thing for a stamp collector who may think he or she has reached a "dead end."

dmhcollectibles offers PNCs in more than one way: unchecked, bulk coil mixes which almost certainly contain postally used plate number coils at wholesale prices, and individually identified - by Scott Number - PNCs. We also sell plate number coil stamp albums, specially designed for just those stamps.