Wing margins

Wing margins refer to right or left margin stamps from panes of British and British Empire stamps printed by De La Rue & Co. from 1855 on. These are all Victorian typographed (surface printed) issues. They exist due to having just one line of perfs in a vertical gutter on a full sheet, used to help divide a sheet into panes before distribution to post offices. Wing margins are hardly mentioned for Victorian typographed stamps from the Empire, but they were also produced by De La Rue and printed similarly.

With the bicolored Victorian issues released in 1881, sheets and their panes were produced differently and wing margins were a thing of the past.

Wing margins apparently offended collectors, maybe for not fitting neatly into a rectangle on an album page. Many have been cut down with a straight edge, which does not exist naturally for the issues of the period. Stamps are also known reperfed to create a better centered example.

 File:GB 4d surface.jpg|Great Britain 4d single, used File:Ceylon 48c surface.jpg|Ceylon 48c single 

See

 * Gutter margin, not the same thing

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