Be Kind And Helpful 2 This Noob

If anybody has a Scott/Darnell/Stanley Gibbons catalog, would anybody be willing 2 provide me an catalog number, grade/condition, and the current catalogue value for a stamp that I have?
Send me a message, if your interested and I will email you a scan.
Thank u, your help will be greatly appreciated!

Welcome to Stamp Community Forum, Hyper_17!

If it is under 90kB, you can upload a pic and someone can provide the info. It's a little bit more effective and efficient than having several members contacting you.

Or, if your pic is greater than 90 kB and you cannot reduce its size, you can use a picture hosting site and post a link to the picture.


Kim

hmmmm....OK!
http://i1221.photobucket.com/albums...ft/stamp.jpg

well, it's a 2 cent Canada stamp... (just kidding) there are a ton of 51st Staters on here.. someone will answer you

Well, it's one of the used small queens with average centering. Condition is not too bad -- it has few short perfs, but no other obvious faults; and the cancel is gentle.

As far as exactly which printing of the 2c small queen, I'll leave that to the Canada specialists. I'm sure they can guide you through the steps and ask you the right questions. It's a little out of my league.

Nice stamp!

k

It appears to be a Scott # 23 1872 of the Montreal and Ottawa Printings , Perf 12 Catalog value for used $2.25. That would be for one in Fine / Used condition.
Keep in mind I'm going off 2009 Scott catalog so give or take .50¢

Really?

Are you surprised that it is worth that much, or are you surprised that it isn't worth more? Old stamps can run anywhere from the catalog minimum of 20c (not uncommon to see this) to millions of dollars (very rare of course).



I'm deferring to your basic ID, as I am not a specialist in Canada.
However, I think you might have typed the wrong catalog number while posting. The Montreal/Ottawa printing for perf 12 in the 2010 Scott is Canada #36 and is still listed at $2.25.

There is a moderately more valuable blue-green variety (yours appears to be green) and also a perf 11.5x12 (you should measure your perfs).

Of course, there are other plate varieties and what-not that are not listed in Scott but are listed in specialized catalogs such as Unitrade. I'll let someone more experienced with Canada fill in those blanks.

Oops, my bad, I put the illustration number instead of the catalog number, it's Illustration A23 catalog #36
Sorry

I am no expert myself but there are known re-entries on this stamp (extra lines printed) that would make this a hundreds of dollars type of stamp, but I see none of them that are listed in the Unitrade catalogue on this stamp.

Nice cancel, as khj says. It is not a Very Fine grade though, more Very Good to Fine because of the perfs touching the design on the upper left.

Colour is great, this is worth checking the perforations to see if it is the 11-1/2 x 12 (horizontal perfs or holes x vertical ones) (the number of holes (or peaks) per 2 centimeters).

If it is the 11-1/2 the Fine value is about 415 which would drop a bit because of the pulled perfs on the left and perhaps the unknown condition of the back (if hat is thinned that reduces things further).

The saving grace is the cancel(it's lightness) and possible study material (if readable in person or with scanning adjustments perhaps). The more readable cancellations the better for a cancel collector.

A stamp's or cancel's condition is always a determining factor of it's price. If that was still on a cover (envelope) with the full cancel and address and postal markings if might be wort $15 if it had something interesting or rare about the names or places also.

The rarer the stamp (or anything) usually the bigger the price you can ask for it. This is a common stamp from the 1870's . There were and still are a few of these around. People wrote lots of letters back then. No email, no computers, all done by letters and mails. So, a lot of stamps.

The special stamps of higher face denominations, used for rarer mailings of heavier items or special deliveries or registered mails would be less common and thus worth more. To a collector.

Some specialists have hundreds of these stamps, just to study them for their different shades of colour or cancellations or peforations or types of paper printed on or usages in different mailings etc etc.

If you like history and people and details and beauty and . . . I could go on forever . . . stamps are for you.

If you are looking for that rare stamp, well, as others have mentioned on here in the past, rare stamps are rare. You don't have a good chance of seeing one. I haven't seen very many and feel lucky to have seen those I have had the opportunity to lay eyes upon.

Are you a collector yourself? Just starting out on a wonderful adventure perhaps? Don't know what's over the horizon yet? Don't get discouraged by all the detail spoken of by others. Just enjoy what you can. The stamps aren't going anywhere and if they are rare, you can take some time to learn more about them (search for Canada Small Queens on Google for this series of stamps) and appreciate them while you have them.