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

Today, I begin my series of posts dealing with the 5c value from this series. Unitrade's listings for this value until fairly recently were were lacklustre, and ignored many of the paper varieties that can be found on the dextrose gum sheet stamps, at the very least, and possibly some of the PVA gum sheet stamps. However, in recent years, they have added several listings so that they now list four levels of fluorescence for the untagged sheet stamps with dextrose gum, and two for the PVA gum stamps.

However, there are many more attributes that show variation on this value, the chief among them being the shades of blue on which the stamp can be found. They run the full gamut, from very deep, dull blues all the way to deep bright blues. Yet, for some reason, they are completely ignored by Unitrade. In addition, there are the usual variations in perforation and gum that can be found also.

This week, I will discuss the untagged sheet stamps in detail. The remainder of this post will …

This week's post will examine the booklet stamps, miniature pane stamps and coil stamps of the 4c seaway lock stamp from this issue. Unitrade and McCann differ slightly in terms of the fluorescent paper varieties that they list for the booklet stamps, but otherwise, they are fairly close in terms of their listings. McCann does list two plate flaws on the BABN booklets, that are not listed in Unitrade, and these are described in this post.

The coils are listed by Unitrade as having all the usual varieties associated with CBN printed coils, such as jump strips, cutting guideline strips and repair paste-ups. However, in addition, there are narrow and wide spacing strips that exist. Unitrade notes the existence of these, but does not list them. Unitrade also lists two basic paper types: DF and LF-fl. However, as we shall see, there are several different types of paper, shade and gum on the coil stamps. So that it is possible to build a considerable amount of scope into a collection o…