On the basis of the drawings from Nilaus Fristrup the engraver L. Lauter produces the “mother” stamp cliché. The production is started in 1882 and this first edition of the arms type is know as the “small corner numerals” but due to problems with the quality of the print new stamp clichés is engraved after only 3 prints of the 20 øre stamp and 4 prints of the 5 øre stamp. The new “mother” cliché was made by the engraver Phillip Batz. Even though Batz clichés also is based on the drawings from Nilaus Fristrup there are some minor differences compared to the first issue, mainly the size of the corner numerals and the second issue is known “large corner numerals”.
The main differences between the two issues are:
1. The wedges in M (in DANMARK) are deeper in the 1884 issue.
2. In the 1882 issue the outer thin oval does not touch the north and south frames.
3. In the 1882 issue the shaded fields touch the crown at the top and the shields shield at the bottom. In the 1884 issue the do not touch and the stamps show a halo effect.
4. The corner numerals is smaller in the first issue
A few of the clichés from the 1882 issue was kept as spare clichés and are used in printing no. 9 – 14 of 20 øre blue and printing no. 6 of 10 øre reed. It is therefore possible to find “small corner numerals” connected to “large corner numerals”.
10th printing position A1- A3, A2 with “small corner numerals”
The technology and process used for making the actual plates for printing is not exactly known. Henning Nielsen studied this and developed a theory that shortly is described in the attached paper.
The arms type stamp was all printed at Thiele Typographic Company and all printed by double plates with 100 stamp in each plate with the exception of first and second print of 10 øre reed that were printed using single plates.