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

Today, I delve into the PVA gum printings of the 1c Northern Lights and Dogsled sheet stamps. According to Unitrade, the first time these appeared was in November 1971, with the general tagged  stamps, and then in December 1971, the untagged sheet stamps were issued. Finally, in January 1972, the stamps with Winnipeg centre bar tagging were issued. This all raises a few questions, which may never be adequately answered: Why were the Winnipeg Tagged stamps issued at all, when the general tagged stamps were already available 2 months before? Why are there no OP-4 tagged stamps? All the GT-2 stamps seem to be OP-2, yet the general consensus among specialists is that OP-4 taggant was used first and abandoned when it became clear that it was unstable. Yet the lack of OP-4 stamps on this issue suggests that the situation may have been more complicated than this.  The answer to the first question may be that the equipment in operation in Winnipeg was still the old Sefcan m...

I interrupt my regular posts this week to bring you a very special offer: a complete mint, used and unused set of the 1897 Jubilee Issue. I am offering this at auction on E-bay for a minimum bid of $540! That works out to be just over $100 for each of the five dollar values! This set has long been regarded by collectors of Canadian stamps as one of the Crown Jewels of a Canadian collection. Although many collectors do manage to complete half or maybe two thirds of this set in their collecting lifetimes, with Unitrade valuing a complete set at anywhere between $3,165 for very good mint, all the way up to $35,000 for very fine NH, completion eludes most collectors. Issue quantities of most values in this set, were very low compared to other stamps of the period: 150,000 of the half cent, 75,000 of the six cent, 150,000 of the ten cent, 100,000 of the fifteen cent, 100,000 of the twenty cent, 100,000 of the fifty cent, 24,900 of the one dollar, 25,000 of the two dollar, 13,...

Today, we delve into the individual stamps of the fascinating 1967-1973 Centennial issue. We start with one of the most complex of the stamps from this issue: the 1c Northern Lights and Dogsled design. Perhaps the only stamp more complicated than this is the 8c slate Parliamentary Library. Because of this complexity, I have decided to deal with this stamp over four separate posts, which will be as follows: The sheet stamps with Dextrose gum, both tagged and untagged. The sheet stamps with PVA gum, both tagged and untagged. The CBN booklet stamps, perf. 12 and the BABN booklet stamps perf. 10. The perf. 12.5 x 12 booklet stamps that come from the 25c, 50c and $1 integral booklets. Once I have presented these stamps in detail, I will conclude with a sorting algorithm which will help you sort through large quantities of mint and used stamps, with maximum efficiency, as there is an optimal sequence of steps to follow. Of course, there is more than one way to approach sorting t...