QEII with hamster cheek

Hi all,

I recently got a second one of these notes and I'm wondering what exactly I got. On the recent addition the ink appears much lighter, but the note - to me at least - doesn't seem washed. The printing looks good, too. But there seem to be differences in the watermark, and…well, the Queen develops a severe hamster cheek with backlight. 

So what do I have here? Suspicious note on top. 

Cheers

53th0s

I think you will find that there are differences between the position of the reverse print on both notes. The “hamster cheek” is a composite effect caused by the closer position of the reverse artwork.

If that was me I would get decent flatbed scans of the notes and then compare the images using the online Oxford University comparison tool:

Image Compare 0.4.0

Look how the reverse artwork changes position between the two notes.

The watermarks may well be different, but it needs decent scans to compare them and your images are not parallel.

Homework done now :)

Slightly different positioning of the backgrounds (see e.g. the white band on the obverse running behind the text above ‘One Pound’), which I don't know what to make of. Otherwise the most striking remains the colour difference in the ink across the two notes.

There's no difference, its design on the back of the note reflecting through on to the front side. If you look closely you can make the Queen's cheek out perfectly fine.

Both notes are the 4th and latest signature of this type JO Page (1971 - 1977). The earlier signatures were O'Brien (1960 - 62), Hollom (1962 - 1965) and Fforde (1966 - 1970).