There have been just six different printing firms  involved with decimal Machins. The work of each can be distinguished fairly readily with a good magnifying glass and a bit of practice. Many are quite distinct and have produced a clearly different stamp. Even where great effort  has been made to match colours, and the processes used nearly identical, I have  felt it right to recognise items produced by different firms.

Recent issues present few variations but the early stamps featured several different types of Queen's head. There are quite a lot  of instances where this is the sole distinguishing feature between one stamp and  another but it is an important one. I shall include some illustrations in a  short while to help with spotting the differences.

Mergers have resulted in changes in printing firms and the current team are De La Rue, Walsall, Enschede and I expect Cartor will make an appearance soon, currently only featured on my lists for Smilers sheets. I've used fairly obvious abbreviations, the only problem being Waddington and Walsall if there's just a W. I have also used the Printer column to indicate which type of head was used, mainly by Harrison in the earlier days, so the H is often omitted. Q stands for the House of Questa, now part of De La Rue.

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