GDR - small collection of phase prints ** (H2-1)

small collection of phase prints Michel over 2200 € ** (H2-1)

Immediate purchase for 88 €

What are phase prints:
Anyone who enjoys picking up a brush – whether as an artist or a DIY enthusiast – knows the unavoidable truth: After the actual work comes the big cleanup – and it can cost as much nerves as the work itself. It may be a small consolation that others aren’t doing any better. Every industry that handles colors faces the same problem. In the printing industry, color rollers and printing formes must be cleaned continuously to free up the little color droplets again and thus guarantee constant color uptake capacity and print quality. Here, however, the cleaning is not done with rags and soap, but with dry ice, ultrasonic, or laser.

In stamp printing, these cleaning processes do not only provide razor-sharp and high-quality postage stamps. They also create philatelic peculiarities that beautifully document the production process of a stamp. After cleaning, the cleanliness of the printing formes is tested before the actual printing job begins. This creates contact prints, test prints, or phase prints.

In multicolor printing, the stamp image is gradually assembled using several printing formes. So for one stamp, several control passes are required – after all, each color should come from a perfectly cleaned printing forme. At the same time, the fit between the different printing formes should also be checked. Therefore every phase of printing is tested individually. The result is the so-called phase prints.


Using the DDR postage stamp issue, e.g. (not in scale here) “20 Years of the Society for Sport and Technique” from 1972, one can mentally trace the process. The stamp image of MiNr. 1777 consists of four colors: gray, turquoise blue, olive yellow, and violet ultramarine.

In the first step of the printing control, only the gray color is applied to unperforated paper. It is still impossible to tell what motif this might be. The second phase adds gray and turquoise blue – an image emerges that could depict a rotor. In the third phase olive-yellow is added. We already clearly recognize that this concerns maritime subjects – and that the registration marks line up, i.e., the image parts fit together perfectly. The fourth and final phase shows the finished image and is – aside from the perforation – identical to the final stamp.

Incidentally, these phase prints of MiNr. 1777 were first described in MICHEL-Deutschland-Spezial 2023. To illustrate the valuation principle, we reveal their price here exceptionally: a price range of 20 to 80 euros is listed. The low price applies to the first printing phase, i.e., the “stamp” in pure gray. The value then increases evenly until the phase print with four colors is reached, i.e., the two-color costs 40, the three-color 60, and the four-color 80 euros. Not bad when you consider that regular stamps are in the cent range.

Phase prints, by the way, never had postal validity – not even the four-color ones. They don’t have to. They’re beautiful even so.

Source Michel


see photos