This variety was printed in August 1895 on plain paper with the Burelé band on the back, perf 12.5 / 13 comb. The ½ value is obscured on the right hand tablet. It is a transient flaw and is known on stamps of the green shade. It is in position no 109 (1st stamp from the left on the bottom row) on the sheet.
The earliest mention I have found of this variety is in the London Philatelist January 1909, p. 6 where it is described amongst a display by the philatelist C.E. McNaughtan as Queensland, errors of Burelé series. Pair of 1d. with "PE" missing, and pair of ½d. with "½" missing right side of stamp.
It was more fully described by Samuel Dalby in 1914-15 as follows: "A small fragment of composition from the inking roller attached itself to the right hand fraction, at first causing only a green blot, it soon became solid and even with the face of the metal and then the fraction and its enclosing loop were quite obliterated. As soon as the trouble was noticed the electrotype was cleaned but the defective sheets were sent to the post office for sale."
It is unknown how many sheets were produced before the flaw was spotted and the defect corrected. Stanley Gibbons does not list it, unlike its more famous cousin from the same year, the 1d red-orange PE of Penny omitted (SG206b). It appears to be scarcer than the PE flaw.
I have never seen a postally used example from the colonial period, which strongly suggests that despite the description from Dalby, the sheets containing this flaw never went on sale at post offices, and therefore any existing examples came from within the Queensland Post and Telegraph Department.
At least one complete sheet containing this flaw has survived, held by Dr Andrew Mortlock
A lovely example in a block of 4 (SG 223 green) seen in the Queensland Stamp Collecting Facebook Group. Ex Griffiths
