Canadian Philately - The Stamps and Postal History of Canada 1851 to Present by Brixton Chrome

This week I examine the last two physical characteristics of these stamps before I get into the most significant topic of this issue, which of course is the paper varieties. The two characteristics that I discuss this week are the gum found on the stamps, as well as the chalk-surfacing found on the mid values and BABN printings of the $1.
The 10c value through $1 landscape designs are found with three different types of chalk surfacing on the paper. Two of them are very distinct and easy to distinguish, while the third looks very similar to the second. The picture below shows the first two of these types:




The first printings of the 10c through 50c that were released in 1972 show distinct vertical ribbing on the surface, as shown in the picture. It is thought that the ribbed coating was experimental and intended to see whether or not is was required in order for the ink to properly adhere. The stamp on the bottom shows the smooth chalk surfacing that replaced the ribbed coating. This…

This week's detailed post about this issue explores a topic that has surprisingly received little to no attention in even the most specialized catalogues: the shade varieties. It is surprising because all but two of the stamps in this series exhibit at least two and up to 4 or 5 different subtle variations in the shades of the inks that were used to print the stamps. What makes the shade variations especially interesting to me, is the fact that many are associated only with certain printings, and certain time periods within the life of the issue, and consequently, it does not appear that they are merely just random varieties that have no significance.

In terms of colours, the orange inks seem to exhibit the most variation, followed by the blue inks. However, as I said above, all but two of the denominations exhibit at least 2 variations in shade, with the 4c Mackenzie King and the $2 Quebec being the only stamps for which I was not able to find any significant variation in the st…

This week I begin a long series of posts that explores, in depth, my favourite definitive issue: the 1972-1978 Caricature Issue of Canada. This issue followed on the heels of the extremely popular 1967-1973 Centennial issue. Because of how popular the Centennial issue was, many collectors did not pay a lot of attention to this series, with the result that a lot of what are now known to be very scarce printings were overlooked and used for postage. This has resulted in the series being quite challenging to collect. It offers a specialist nearly everything they could want in a stamp series, including:
Shade varieties.Design type differences.Constant plate varieties.Perforation differences.Tagging differences.Paper fluorescence varieties.Other paper varieties, such as thickness, texture and coating.Line and comb perforations, as well as perforated an imperforate selvage.Interesting postal historyMultiple plates and printings of the same stamps done by 2 different printing firms.  The det…