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

Overview Most early Canadian issues after 1897 have a plethora of proof material to collect and this aspect of most issues is generally the most expensive and challenging. The Admiral Issue of 1911-1928 is no exception. In fact it is especially challenging due to the number of denominations in the set and also the number of colours that were issued during its life. The BNA Proofs website gives a comprehensive listing of proof material for this issue - 73 items in all. The website gives estimated market values that cover an extremely wide range  from as low as $500 for some of the trial colour proofs, up to $20,000 for the composite dies of the 1c. Most items however are estimated in the $2,000-$5,000 range. My intent here is not to copy their work, but to give you a brief synopsis, and a link where you can go look at their page yourself for more information. The Categories of Proof Material The 73 items that BNA proofs lists fall into 4 categories: Essays - 5 items....

Overview The Admiral issue was the first definitive issue to feature regularly issued coil stamps. The previous Edward VII issue did have some experimental coil stamps, but none that were regularly issued to the public. There were three formats for the coil stamps of this issue: Perforated 8 Horizontally - Issued only for the first printings of the 1c and 2c values.  Perforated 8 Vertically - This was the main format used throughout the life of the issue. Perforated 12 Horizontally - This was used only for a few values up to 1921.  In addition to these, sheets of the perf. 8 vertical coils were placed on sale to the public, which resulted in part-perforate varieties. The initial issue, which consisted of wet printings of the 1c orange-yellow, 2c dark green and 3c carmine, were available only by favour, and are very rare. The second issue, which is much more readily available consisted of dry printings of the 1c and 2c. Some of these coils, most notably those perfo...

Now that I have just completed my initial sort of some 2,000 1c, and 3c Small Queens, I thought it would be good to share some of my initial insights about their characteristics. In doing this I have decided to focus on the perforations only for now and later, after my other shipment of 3,500 stamps arrives, I will look at paper and shade. So what I have done is use my Instanta perforation gauge to check all 2,000 or so stamps that were present in this lot. Under a heading for each perforation measurement that I have found, I will note my general observations about: papers cancellations shades plate characteristics, i.e. whether the stamps have strong or weak impressions etc.  how the perforation group compares to the others A big and important question in the minds of specialists has to be whether of not the different perforation  measurements resulted from different perforators that were used concurrently during the life of the issue, versus those perforators bein...

About two months ago now I bought a three stockbook lot of used Small Queens. The lot consisted of a stockbook each of the half cent, 1c and 3c. I had bought them because my stock in this area is weak and I find that I can not generally keep them in stock when I do have them as they are extremely popular with collectors. I consider myself a fairly knowledgeable philatelist, but this issue has always troubled me, as it does most collectors. The number one question most collectors have is: how can I tell if it is Montreal or Ottawa? This has become important due largely to the fact that the standard postage stamp catalogues list both Montreal and Ottawa printings, with the prices assigned to the Montreals, being as much as 10 times higher than Ottawas. This concern among collectors has been addressed by a plethora of articles purporting to provide an algorithm to enable collectors to sort through their stamps and identify them with 90% certainty. The problem is, most of the time when y...

Before I move on with more posts about the Admiral Issue, I wanted to talk a little bit today about the material issued between 1927 and 1952, as I have for the past month, been organizing my stock of this period and getting it ready for sale. What has struck me the most as I have worked on this material, is just how much variation there is to interest a specialist, and how most of this detail has been ignored by the standard stamp catalogues. This is a pity because to look at the catalogue listings, one can easily come to the conclusion that the issues are straightforward, and that there is little to interest a specialist. Consequently, I believe that very little has been done with this material compared to the popular Large Queens, Small Queens and Admirals. I'm not sure why this is the case and by the time you have finished reading this post, I hope you will agree with me that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I suspect that there is a perception among philatelists tha...