Sheets and Plate Multiples of the 1908 Quebec Tercentenary Issue


Overview

The immense popularity of these stamps in high grades and the resulting significant price discrepancy between stamps in very high grades and those in lower grades means that very few of these stamps will have survived in intact sheets of 100. Nearly all have been broken up by dealers to supply collectors wanting nice single stamps. The only sheets that I have either seen or have been aware of over the past several years are:


  • A complete sheet of the 1/2c brown black with the re-entry was sold by Brigham Auctions in their sale of Mr. Brigham's complete sheets. 
  • A complete sheet of the 1c was once shown to me by Bob MacGillvary of the former Stanley Stamp Company in Vancouver. This would have been back in 2000 or so. 
  • A complete sheet of  the 5c was being sold by City Stamp Montreal either last year or the year before. 
Unitrade notes that any imprint multiple, even a pair is scarce and commands a premium of 50% over the price of the corresponding single stamps, so collecting anything with an imprint will prove to be quite a challenge. Fortunately, the number of plates used is reasonably low, so the number of items you need to obtain in order to form a representative collection of this issue's plate multiples is not high. 

Plates Used and Location of the Imprints

From my examination of the half-cent sheet that was sold in the Brigham sale, it would appear that the imprint was located only in the top margin between stamps 5 and 6. This would suggest that a pair would be sufficient to obtain the full imprint. However, Unitrade does note that some imprint blocks need to be 8-10 stamps to obtain the full imprints on some sheets, which suggests that on some of the sheets, the imprint extends across four of five stamps. I think this is a boilerplate paragraph that has been placed under several issues in the catalogue because I have not yet seen a plate block of this issue where the imprint extends across more than two stamps. Even in Gary Lyon's retail inventory, where he is selling a complete set of plate blocks, they are plate blocks of 4, not 8, and certainly not 10. This would explain why they are so hard to find - because the only stamps 5 and 6 on the sheet can preserve the imprint. 

The plates used for the stamps are as follows:

  • 1/2c brown black: plate 1
  • 1c blue green: plates 1-4. It appears that plates 3 and 4 had imprints at the bottom as well. 
  • 2c carmine rose: plates 1-4. It appears that plate 3 had the imprint at the bottom, and on plate 4, there is an inverted imprint at the bottom as well as at the top. 
  • 5c dark blue: plates 1 and 2. Plate 2 is very rare, and is valued at more than 8 x the price of plate 1.
  • 7c olive green: plate 1 only.
  • 10c violet: plate 1 only.
  • 15c orange: plate 1 only.
  • 20c dark brown: plate 1 only.
So it would seem that a complete set of plate blocks or pairs would consist of 15 blocks or pairs, if only 1 imprint is collected per plate, or 18 blocks or pairs if bottom, as well as top imprints are collected. 

My next posts will deal with the remaining aspects of this issue, and then I will be ready to start writing about the 1911-1925 Admiral Issue.

View my material at:

tores.ebay.ca/Pristine-Canadian-Stamps?_rdc=1


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