It was not until early in 1908 that the Post Office Department issued some coil stamps of the 1902 series for use in vending and stamp affixing machines, but purely as an experiment. They were found to be satisfactory and as the Department realized that a demand existed for this type of stamp it was less than three weeks after the new design had been issued in the ordinary form that it was also available in coil form.

As in the previous issue they were made from the regular 400 subject sheets which were perforated twelve in the horizontal spaces between the stamps and then cut into strips of twenty. The horizontal guide line appeared in the middle of each of these strips, which were pasted together by hand and rolled into coils of 500 and 1,000. These were coiled on one half inch diameter pasteboard cores. A "paste up" or line pair, therefore, occurred every twentieth stamp and are about eight times scarcer than the ordinary pairs.

This type of coil was never as popular among users as the endwise coil.

The source for the design was this bust by Jean-Antoine Houdon