King George VI's coronation covers of Burma

The coronation of King George VI was a historic event that took place on May 12, 1937, in Westminster Abbey, London. To commemorate the occasion, philatelists in Burma produced private commemorative covers on the same day.

Mrs. Reardon from Meiktila created several covers, cancelled on May 12, 1937, at Meiktila PO. She used newspaper cut-out portraits of Their Majesties King George VI and Queen Elizabeth as cachets. Each cover has different cachets and is unique due to the use of cut-outs. I have two examples from my collection, which I have displayed below.

Famous philatelist Naigamwalla also produced several types of covers to commemorate the coronation. The two basic types are displayed below, with two variations for each type that have been documented in Steven Zwillinger's Naigamwalla cachet catalogue.

To date, I have only come across the commemorative covers produced by Mrs. Reardon and Mr. Naigamwalla. It is possible that other types were produced by other philatelists, but I have yet to discover them.

Flaw or Tear?

I found something interesting in recent ebay listing, the 5R value of 1946 King George VI stamp has obvious white strip.   The strip cross the King's face from nose to mouth.  It is unclear from the photo uploaded by the seller, but I tried my luck to explore more of the strip, flaw or tear.

When the item arrived to me, I takes the microscopic photos of it and did analysis.  Based on the close up photos, it is assumed as a flaw.  One more analysis to do is to use electronics watermark detector to check the thickness of the stamp paper.  If it has same thickness throughout the stamp, it can be confirmed that as a flaw.  The close up view is displayed below.