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

Overview This aspect of the series is a source of confusion for the beginner - especially when they only have a few stamps from the series and are trying to figure out which printings are which. However, I will show you a series of tests you can employ that will help you decide how to properly classify your stamps.  First it helps to know which stamps exist only as wet printings, and which exist only as dry printings. Studying these and applying my tests to them will help you become comfortable with the reliability of the tests and will help you when the time comes to applying the various tests. The following values of the set exist only as wet printings: The 1c green The 2c carmine The 5c dark blue The 7c yellow ochre The 10c plum The 1c and 2c perf. 8 horizontal coils All the perf 12 horizontal coils The 1c green and 2c carmine perf. 8 vertical coils The following values exist only as dry printings: The 8c blue The 10c bistre brown All the othe

Introduction The death of King Edward VII on May 6, 1910 necessitated a new series of stamps to be issued bearing a likeness of his son, George V. The design for this new issue, came to be known as the Admiral design because it shows King George V dressed in an Admiral's navy uniform. The actual design was a composite in which the head taken from a photograph by W. & D. Downey and the chest and uniform from a photograph by W. Barnett. The design was engraved by Robert Savage and the first stamps of the series were issued on December 22, 1911. The American Bank Note Company of Ottawa was the printer as with the earlier issues. It changed its name to the Canadian Bank Note Company in 1923. Of all the modern issues before the current reign, it is this one which offers collectors a vastness of scope that cannot be rivaled. It is the first issue to feature regularly issued coil stamps and booklets which are within reach of the collector with modest means. It offers different pri

I have just purchased a copy of the 1/2c black on a thick fibrous wove paper, that is clearly not one of the other Duckworth types that I wrote about in my earlier post on this topic. I have therefore updated this post to include a picture and description of this paper type. Those of you interested in Large Queens may wish to re-read this post: http://canadianphilately.blogspot.ca/2015/09/the-duckworth-paper-types.html

Overview Because of its brief period of use and the scarcity of the basic stamps for values over the 2c, this is one of the more challenging issues to collect on cover. The above cover is an extraordinary example of the entire set used to pay the postage on a cover sent to Japan. As you can see, the condition is tatty, but this cover is of extreme rarity both because it is franked with the complete set, and also because of how exotic the destination is. There are essentially five angles that one can collect the postal history from: 1. Edward VII postal stationery uprated using stamps of the set to pay higher rates. 2. Single usages on cover of each value to various destinations. 3. Multiple frankings to pay higher rates. 4. First day covers. 5. Philatelic covers. Today's post will examine these collecting angles in a bit more detail and will illustrate examples of some of the better usages of these stamps that can be found. Uprated Edward Postal Stationery The