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

Today, I will be looking at all the printings of the 2c tagged stamps from this series. Unitrade's listings for the tagged examples of this stamp are quite extensive now, with no fewer than 7 varieties listed. This has grown over the years from just four when I was young, in the early 1980's. However, if you take paper colour under UV light into account, there are even more than 7. Today's post will hopefully shed light on this. The basic varieties of tagging, and the dates on which they were first introduced are: The Winnipeg 2-bar tagging, which was introduced when the set was issued on February 8, 1967. Such stamps only came with dextrose gum.  The Winnipeg centre bar tagged examples with dextrose gum. These were first issued in December 1968. The Winnipeg centre bar tagged examples with PVA gum. These were first issued in March 1972. The general Ottawa tagged examples with PVA gum. These were first introduced in December 1972, and remained in use until the 2c ...

Today's post will be the first of two posts dealing with the 2c value from this series, which depicts a Pacific Coast totem pole in British Columbia. Unitrade 's listings for this stamp are fairly straightforward for the untagged stamps. There are just four listings included to cover all of the untagged printings made from 1967 to 1973. These are quite inadequate to describe all of the variations that can be found, as we shall soon see. The tagged stamps are accorded many more listings in Unitrade, with seven variations listed. However, again, this is an over-simplification of what actually exists. This is one of the few values of the set that was issued in booklets, and also one of only two that are known to exist on paper that shows clear horizontal ribbing on the surface, the other value being the last printings of the 6c black. This ribbed paper is found quite extensively in the next definitive issue that replaced this one in late 1973. So it would seem logical to conc...