Saint Vincent, with notes and publishers' pricesNapier, Francis John Hamilton Scott
History
Saint Vincent, with notes and publishers' prices
Napier, Francis John Hamilton Scott
Postage stamps -- Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Even if the distinctive colour of this stamp did not make its
identification very easy, its peculiar perforation would do so. It is
the solitary instance in Section I. in which neither the A nor the B
machine was used, but a third machine, which we call “C.” This is hardly
the proper place for us to enter into a dissertation on the various
perforating machines that were employed by Messrs. Perkins, Bacon &
Co., and used by them for perforating the stamps of the Colonies for
which they held contracts; but, at all events, the C perforation is to
be found, not only in this one St. Vincent stamp, but also more or less
frequently in those of Bahamas, Barbados, Ceylon, Natal, Queensland, St.
Helena, St. Lucia, Trinidad, and Western Australia.
Like the A and B machines, the C machine was a guillotine one, and like
them its irregularities prevent us from naming it by any particular
gauge. It is generally a rather regular 15½, but also frequently 15, and
in some instances we have found it to measure only 14½. It is probable
that this machine is also responsible for a perforation of 16, said to
have been seen in St. Vincent stamps. It can never be mistaken for the
perforation A, for not only is its most frequent gauge a higher one than
that to which the A machine usually attains, but its pins, or plungers,
make clean-cut circular holes, smaller in size, but otherwise just like
the early perforations of the B machine, although, from insufficient care
and attention being paid to the working of the machine, it is rather
difficult to find specimens that show the holes clean cut on all four
sides.
This stamp, like those of the preceding issue, is found on both the thin
and the thick paper.
We give two illustrations of this stamp, Nos. 13 and 14, which are taken
from the only two unused specimens we have ever seen, or heard of. No. 13
gauges 15½ on all four sides; this is the gauge which is most frequently
found in stamps perforated by the C machine. No. 14 is perforated 15 at
the bottom and right side; the top and left side are too ragged to be
measured with accuracy, but they appear to be the usual 15½. The gauge
of 14½ (and that of 16, if it exists) must have been present in a very
limited portion of the line of pins, as it is very rarely met with.
Issue 3.
_Between 1863 and 1866._
1d., bright rose-red; many shades, from pale to deep.
6d., blue-green; very slight shades, all dark.
The two stamps constituting this issue differ in no respect from those
of Issue I., except in the perforation, which is now B, or B×A, instead
of A. It is not possible to say at what precise date the B perforation
first came into use. One thing which is certain is, that it, as well as
the compound B×A, was known to philatelists as existing in these two
values before December, 1866, at which date both perforations A and B
as well as the compound B × A, were described by a writer in the _Stamp
Collector’s Magazine_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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