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

Back in 1990 I worked for Weeda Stamps in Vancouver, BC. My boss, Chris Weeda once made a remark that influenced my choice of collecting for many, many years to come. He said "I think that modern stamps are the most uninteresting material, and that there is nothing worthwhile in collecting it. All you are doing is giving the post office free money." That statement resonated with me, because I was a fickle collector, and at that time I was at a crossroads in my collecting. Up until that point, I had always enjoyed collecting Elizabethan stamps from Great Britain, Australia and Canada, and I was a specialist. But I felt the desire to collect something prestigious - something that would elicit "oohs and aahs" from my fellow collectors. I could see from Chris Weeda's remark that modern material was not regarded in this fashion, and was not accorded any respect, with Chris proudly telling his own customers that he used anything after the War for postage. Of course, ...

Today's post continues our examination of non-transformative and transformative inks as they were used on the printings of the 1967-1973 Centennial Issue. Specifically, we will look at the 5c through 7c values. 5c Blue - Atlantic Fishing Village The vast majority of the printings of this stamp are in a transformative ink that comes very close to being black under UV, while a smaller portion of the stamps are printed in non-transformative inks that either do not appear significantly different under the lamp, or they merely appear deeper, without losing the essential character of their original colour. Non-Transformative Inks Let us start off with five stamps that are all printed in various shades of deep blue: The first two stamps on the top row are CBN sheet stamps with PVA gum, one of which is tagged with a Winnipeg centre bar, while the upper right stamp is a CBN booklet stamp on dead paper. On the second row we have a BABN perf. 10 booklet stamp, and to the right,...

Today, we get into the inks used to print the Centennial issue, as they appear under, or are affected by long-wave ultraviolet light, or black light. Today's post will discuss what I mean by this, and then will look at some of the differences that appear on the 1c through 4c values of the series. Our perception of colour is a function of how the pigments interact with the light that illuminates them. How an ink will appear under yellow incandescent light will be different from how it appears under daylight, which will differ still from how it appears under various forms of coloured light. However, usually a colour will appear more or less the way you would expect it to appear with the addition of the colour that is inherent in the light. Long wave ultraviolet light is of course, a purple light. So the appearance of most colours would appear darker and washed over with a purple undertone. I would refer to these inks as non-transformative , because the introduction of black light ...

Today's post will conclude my examination of the visible shade varieties on the 1967-1973 Centennial issue 20c Dark Blue - Quebec Ferry There are two distinct groups of shades on this value. On the stamps issued with dex gum, the shades range from a steel blue to a deep blue and finally to indigo. This last shade contains quite a lot of black, and is very dark. The stamps issued with PVA gum tend to be printed with much brighter shades of blue, with the deepest ones being close to the brightest of those with dex gum. Dex Gum Stamps In comparing the shades on this stamp, I find the solid letters of "Canada" to give the best representation of the true colour. The top left stamp is a near perfect match to Gibbons's indigo. The stamp to the right of it is also closest to Indigo, but contains a touch less black, and is brighter. The bottom left stamp is an almost perfect match to Gibbons's steel blue, and appears much brighter than the two stamps on the ...