Canada: Its Postage Stamps and Postal StationeryHowes, Clifton A. (Clifton Armstrong)
History
Canada: Its Postage Stamps and Postal Stationery
Howes, Clifton A. (Clifton Armstrong)
Postage stamps -- Canada; Postal stationery -- Canada
The reasons that the plates of these two stamps were
never actually brought into use, though evidently prepared with the
other values in smaller size, were probably these: The 12-1/2 cent of
1868, as we have seen, though issued to postmasters for several
subsequent years, was not printed after 1871, nor was the old stock
exhausted when its use was discontinued. There was therefore no call for
any supply to be printed from the new plate. The 15 cent was not printed
between 1869 and 1875, and after that in such relatively small
quantities each year until 1896, that, unless we are greatly mistaken,
the original plate never wore out, but was used without change to the
end.
The old adage that "history repeats itself" was again exemplified in
Canadian stamps when in July, 1882, the 1/2 cent stamp, for fourteen
years unaltered, was once more reduced to a smaller size than the
regular series. The general effect of the design remained the same, but
the foliate ornamentation gave place to angular outlines. The
illustration will be found as No. 27 on Plate II.
All of the above mentioned stamps, except the 1/2 cent as will be
explained, were line engraved on steel and printed in sheets of 100, ten
rows of ten. The marginal imprints turn out to be of three varieties in
this series, and we have pieced together what information we can
concerning them, for strips with marginal imprints are extremely hard to
find now. The first plates made, including at least the 1, 2, 3, 5, and
6 cent stamps, and probably the 10 cent as well, since that was engraved
before the 5 cent, had the denomination in shaded Roman capitals, 4 mm.
high, [Illustration No. 121 on Plate XI], over stamps 2 and 3 of the top
row. Sometimes the shading is hardly apparent, as in our illustration,
but it can be detected. Beginning over stamp 4, extending over stamps 5
and 6, and ending over stamp 7, is the inscription we found on the
series of 1868 (see illustration 107 on Plate IX), "BRITISH AMERICAN
BANK NOTE CO. MONTREAL & OTTAWA" in colorless Roman capitals in the
little strip of color 1 mm. wide and 51 mm. long. This imprint is also
beneath the bottom row of stamps and at each side, reading up at the
left and down at the right [Illustration No. 111 on Plate X]. We have so
far not seen this inscription on the 5 cent and 10 cent sheets, and
doubt if it exists on the former at least.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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