Author: lasoksmith

NOSTALGIA- from an old stamp album

THE PHILATELIC REGISTER is owned, published and edited by Ian Lasok-Smith

Contact Address: 6 Hough Green, Chester, CH4 8JG.  Email: [email protected]

ThePhilatelicRegister.com has replaced the montly issue of The Philatelic Register. The change in format has been dictated by the need to have a format that is more sustainable with regards the time required to keep it updated. As was The Philatelic Register, this evolving resource is FREE, users just need to register (only name and email address required) on the site to gain full access to article content.  All articles may be downloaded and printed or saved to PC. The site has been constructed on a WordPress platform and as such  has afforded much more versatility and new opportunites compared with original format.

I hope that as it evolves this new format will make it easier to fulfill the “Mission Statement” that encompasses the inspiration behind the original idea.

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The most important purpose of the site is to provide a varied and expanding repository of knowledge and in doing so also try to recognise and preserve the work of many dedicated philatelists over the years. There will be regular postings but not at any specified times. The most recent postings appearing in “Latest Postings” in the sidebar.

The content of the site will be fully searchable using the search engine on the site.

Ian Lasok-Smith.  Owner, Publisher and Editor “The Philatelic Register”

Philatelic Traders Society (Gold Membership)

Very likely to be possibly almost “unique…”

Part musing, part cautionary tale……..

When selling items I am wary of using the term “unique” and  exhibit a degree of caution by usually preceding it with a “possibly” and inviting any would be buyer to make their own decision.

Being a collector at heart I was recently tempted in to making a purchase of an item that referenced a footnote in Gibbons Specialised Volume 3 (Predecimal Elizabeth II).  Fortunately it was not the reference to the footnote that reeled me in but the fact that it was an item I had always wanted to have and this was a pristine example.

The item in question illustrated above is the 1969 Christmas issue 5d with reversed perforation. The left margin of the sheet is imperforate. It should be perforated. Presumably if this is to be taken at face value my cylinder block above is “unique.”

This variety is listed as a single in the Spec. Vol 3 as item Spec. W176h “imperf through left margin”. See close up of listing below

There is further explanation in the footnote to the Christmas issue previously mentioned. See close up below and reference to “….single sheet which was fed in to the perforator upside down”.

Some time after the purchase, with which I was very pleased and remain so, I was whiling away  some time as I am frequently prone to do,  browsing through one of the many hundreds of old stamp magazines and journals that surround me in my office.  I was looking through the March 13th issue of “Philatelic Magazine” from 1970 when I happened across the advertisment illustrated below from  B. Alan one of the foremost dealers of modern errors at the time. I will leave the reader to draw his own conclusions but will end by saying that my well thumbed copy of SG Spec. Vol. 3 from which the captions above have been taken is the 13th edition published in 2019.

All About Perforating

In the early years, from 1840 until 1850, all stamps were issued imperforate, and had to be cut from the sheet with scissors or knife. This was time-consuming and error-prone (as mangled stamps of the era attest). Once reliable separation equipment became available, nations switched rapidly.

For the stamp collector, perforations matter, not only as a way to distinguish different stamps (a perf 10 may be rarer and more valuable than a perf 11 of the same design), but also as part of the condition of stamps. Short or “nibbed” perfs are undesirable and reduce value, as are bent or creased perfs.

In this article  which can be downloaded from attachment below from  “Stamp Collecting Weekly” February 15th 1968, E.C. Ehrmann decribes in detail but with clarity the process of perforating.

All About Perforating

All About Colour

The table above from a well known reference work, lists 18 diferent shades  of green. With prices for a shade of colour ranging from  £3  to £13000 (although £4000 of this seems to relate to the quality of the gum, but that’s for another day).

When one considers, as O J Simpson notes in his article “This Colour Business” below from “Stamp Collecting Weekly” February 29th 1952, that “Colour is an intangible property of all substances but cannot exist in itself and is therefore subjective”, how comfortable do we feel when we view the tables above?

In addition to O J Simpson’s article, attached below are a further three articles by  P. L. Baldwin “Colour” and  A. Mackenzie “Colours in Stamps” &  “Colour Variations in Sheets”  that between them essentially cover the science and almost “philosophy” of colour. The articles although appearing in “Stamp Collecting Weekly” in 1949, 1950 and 1952 remain highly relevant today and as such are in my opinion “must read articles”

This Colour Business

Colour

Colours in Stamps

Colour Variation in Sheets

The Postage Stamps of Austrian-Italy, 1850-1858

         

The Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, was a constituent land of the Austrian Empire from 1815 to 1866. It was created in 1815 by resolution of the Congress of Vienna in recognition of the Austrian House of Habsburg-Lorraine’s rights to the former Duchy of Milan and the former Republic of Venice after the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, proclaimed in 1805, had collapsed.

The kingdom would cease to exist within the next fifty years—the region of Lombardy was ceded to France in 1859 after the Second Italian War of Independence, which then immediately ceded it to the Kingdom of Sardinia. Lombardy-Venetia was finally dissolved in 1866 when its remaining territory was incorporated into the recently proclaimed Kingdom of Italy following the kingdom’s victory against Austria in the Third Italian War of Independence.

Keith Tranmer who earlier had produced a series of articles on The Postage Stamps of Austria, 1850-1858 published in “Stamp Collecting Weekly” undertook to provide similar detail on the Stamps and Postmarks of Austrian-Italy.  These articles are gathered together and can be downloaded from the link below.

Austrian-Italy Postage Stamps 1850-1858

 

The Postage Stamps of Austria, 1850-1858

                                                                                  

In a series of articles published in “Stamp Collecting Weekly” between November 1965 and February 1966 Keith Tranmer goes in to significant detail about the First Postage Stamp issues of Austria.

Until that time (1965) very little had been published on the subject in the English language. Mr Tranmer describes the various paper types, the classification of the frame types, details about plate flaws and varieties and finally a discussion around the postmarks of the time. The articles have been brought together and can be downloaded from link below.

Postage Stamps of Austria 1850-1858

 

 

Postage Stamps and Postal History of The Canal Zone

Postage stamps and postal history of the Canal Zone is a subject that covers the postal system, postage stamps used and mail sent to and from the Panama Canal Zone from 1904 up until October 1978, after the United States relinquished its authority of the Zone in compliance with the treaty it reached with Panama.

The Canal Zone was a strip of territory 50 miles (80 km) long and 10 miles (16 km) wide across the Isthmus of Panama, and was ceded to the United States for the purpose of constructing and operating the canal which connected the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Upon the establishment of the Canal Zone in 1903, seventeen Post Offices had also been established and were operated by the U.S. Government.

The Canal Zone and its post offices, with the main distributing office in Cristobal, operated as an independent government agency under the direct authority of the President of the United States. In the towns where there were railroad stations, the station agents of the Panama Railroad functioned as postmasters. Along with ships and freight, domestic mail and mail from around the world moved through the canal. The Canal Zone Post Office began operating and issued its first postage stamps on June 24, 1904. Initially these were the current stamps of Panama or (less often) the U.S., overprinted with ‘CANAL ZONE’ in various styles. Philatelists have identified over 100 varieties, some of them quite rare (and counterfeited)

The attached articles were compiled by myself and published in the early issues of the old format Philatelic Register.

Canal Zone The First Issues

Canal Zone 1906-1924

Canal Zone Airmails

Inns as Post-Towns

After the end of the Napoleonic Wars, new roads were laid down by passing small towns. A consequence of this was that a change of horses drawing mail coaches now often needed to be undertaken a long distance from a town, often at a convenient inn. In time these inns became Official Receiving Houses.

In the article attached below from “Stamp Collecting Weekly” February 7th 1964, W.G. Stitt Dibden describes this evolution.

Inns as Post-Towns