Pitfalls of Collecting the 1908 Quebec Tercentenaries

I had intended to do one final post today to complete my coverage of this issue. However, the day got away on me and I find myself with only 15 minutes. So I will make this post today very brief and quick and will resume on Monday with my final post about this issue.

One topic I can cover very quickly are the pitfalls and the immense impact that condition has on price.

Impact of Condition on Price

This issue, probably more than most of the Canadian stamp issues during this time is very sensitive to price. Why this is the case is somewhat of a mystery, when all stamps from this period are very scarce in superlative grades. However, the fact remains that stamps of this issue in average condition are worth relatively little compared with those in very high condition grades. Take for example the half cent value, which catalogues $15 for a very fine mint example and $5 for fine mint. There is a 200% premium in the catalogue for NH stamps in very fine condition and a note that extremely fine examples are worth much more than VF.

For example in my store I have:


  • A superb 96 lightly hinged example priced at $60 - 4 times the very fine price. It is perfect as far as the eye can tell, but with a light hinge mark. 
  • A very fine 84 NH example I have priced for $45 - full catalogue. Again, it looks perfect to the naked eye, but measurement of the margins under a calibrated magnifier reveals that the margins are not exactly equal.
  • A very fine 80 lightly hinged example I have priced for $12.
  • A very fine 75 hinged example I have priced for $9.
  • A fine 70 hinged example I have priced for $4.
So you can see that the difference between the superb 96 and the fine 70 is $56 - or almost 15 times as much. If the superb 96 had also been never hinged, this would have been a $150-$200 stamp. If it had jumbo sized margins as well, add 50% to each price. 

Pitfalls

Because of the importance of centering and gum on this issue, these stamps have been quite extensively tampered with. The main things to watch for are:

  • Re-perforating to create perfectly centered stamps.
  • Re-gumming and re-distribution of gum.
  • Application of fake or posthumous corner cancels to mint no gum stamps to create equally valuable superb used copies. 
I have covered these types of shenanigans in other posts, so I won't go into great detail here. But suffice to say that perforations should be evenly spaced and should line up more or less perfectly with the "teeth"on opposite sides. Margins should be at least 1 mm on the largest side. If a stamp has margins less than 1 mm around on all four sides, chances are very good that it has been re-perforated. 

The gum should be a smooth, shiny yellowish gum. Overly crackly, brownish or colourless white or matte gum may well not be original. 

Postmarks should generally be dated 1908-1911 generally. If you are going to collect corner cancels, you should make sure that the ink is of a type that is consistent with that found on other used stamps of the period. 







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Federal Bill Stamps 1864-1890's

Image
Overview The bill stamps of Canada are the first revenues to be listed by Van Dam and also provide a fine field for the philatelist who is looking to collect beautiful stamps, while having the chance to form large studies of varieties.  There were three issues of bill stamps all shown below: They were each printed by a different firm, with the Canadian Bank Note Company (CBN) printing the first issue shown in the middle, the American Bank Note Company (ABN) printing the second issue, shown on the right and finally the British American Bank Note Company (BABN) printing the third issue, shown at left. All stamps were printed in sheets of 100. The first issue was in use from 1864-1865, the second from 1865-1868 and the third from 1868 until the 1890's. The purpose of the bill stamps was to evidence payment of stamp duties on monetary instruments like promissory notes and cheques. The amount of tax required to be paid would, of course vary with the face amount of th...
Read more

The Perforations on the 1972-1978 Caricature Issue of Canada

Image
This week, my detailed blog post about this issue looks at the perforations in detail. In addition to the basic differences in measurement, all of which are listed in the catalogues there were some difficulties encountered by the CBN as this was the first time that they had used comb machines to perforate stamps. In addition, there are many instances with the sheets and the plate blocks where you can see double strikes of the comb perforator, which give some clues as to how the panes were laid out in the overall print layout. Some examples of the types of things covered in my detailed post are shown below: Here this block shows selvage at the sides that is fully perforated through, while that at the top and bottom of the sheet shows only a single extension hole. This suggests that the panes were laid out horizontally in the print run. On this pair you can see a clear difference in the appearance of the vertical perforations on the bottom half of the bottom stamp in ...
Read more

Distinguishing the Printings of the Small Queen Issue

As stated in my last post, the classification of printings between first Ottawa, Montreal and second Ottawa has been a source of frustration for many collectors. I wanted to describe the factors that you need to look at in order to properly classify the printings and then combine them into an efficient algorithm that you can use to sort large quantities of Small Queens Quickly and efficiently. The following attributes will almost always lead to positive identification if you know them well and understand what to look for: 1. Perforations 2. Paper 3. Colour 4. Position dots 5. Cancellations 6. Denominations 7. Gum Because there are exceptions to the general rules established by each attribute above, it is often necessary to consider several attributes together. Perforations Most of the first Ottawa printings of all values other than the 1c and 3c are perforated between 11.75 and 11.9. This is a gauge that is never found on the Montreals or the second Ottawas. Some of ...
Read more