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I've noticed that there seems to be quite a variation in the line spacing on the 13c decals, specifically that the lowest (green) line of lettering is sometimes practically touching the line above it. Having looked through Nick's page and the Vectis pictures all the variations with really close spacing seem to have knobbly gpw, but not all the knobbly gpw have the really close spacing. Could it be the earliest examples only - mine is a Code 2?

It also crossed my mind that it may be down to the application of the decals themselves - mine doesn't seem to be identical on each side, and one side seems to have been trimmed in one corner to fit neatly.

The different colours will have been printed onto the decal in separate operations. If a particular colour was not printed in quite the right place (or, to use the jargon, the registration for that particular colour was out), that text will come out slightly higher or lower on the decal.
I would therefore regard this as simply an extreme example of poor registration rather than a it being a decal variation in its own right.