Odd Cancel On Victoria Stamp

With my newly acquired knowledge that Victoria was a country as well as a queen(compliments of SCF)I was able to find this in the catalogue.

Couldn't they have called it "Victorialand" to avoid confusing people like me

Anyway this beauty from 1899 is no. 181 and valued at a lousy 8 cents in my l982 book.

Getting to the point, the cancel seems odd and I'm wondering if it had some particular meaning such as registered or railroad?

R does mean registered.
And I'm sure the value has gone up a few cents since 1982.
Pretty stamp though.

Thank you

I really like my 82 catalogue because it differentiates between the 3,4,5, etc. cent values, while the newest one just gives any cheap stamp a 20 cent value. With higher values, I believe I've seen as many go down as up in spite of inflation.

butterfly, my 2010 Scott catalogue shows #181 used at 50 cents so it has climbed a whopping 42 cents in value since 1982.

Thanks, Must be those hordes of new Australian collectors firming up the market:)

I hate to seem a doomsayer, but I make this to be SG 357a, the rosine shade. Gibbons still (in the 2011 catalogue) rates it at a minimum 10p.

However ... Gibbons lists, but doesn't price, a watermark sideways variety for this stamp. Worth looking: you never know.

Victoria is also a city in Canada!!

Sounding more and more like I need to get a Gibbons. Scott doesn't mention any varieties.

Butterfly, if you're going to do the British Commonwealth outside North America seriously, you'll really have to have a fairly recent Gibbons. Apart from the possibility of leaving large dollops of money on the table, you won't be able to talk to serious collectors, if you don't have Gibbons. Most of us don't speak Scott.

Just ordered an 86 Commonwealth Gibbons.
Hoping to soon become "philatelicly" bilingual, learning my p's and d's

Butterfly - you might want to try and get a more recent edition Gibbons when you can. During the 1990's (can't remember the exact year) Gibbons did an overhaul and rewrote the entire Australian States section. The numbers of most of the stamps were changed. I'm not sure whether this affected all Commonwealth countries, but it certainly did the Australian States and Australia. So where you see Tony quoting 357a above, won't be 357a in your 86 Catalogue. This will be a bit confusing when you see SG numbers quoted and they don't match. Your 86 version will still be useful in identifying varieties, watermarks etc, just keep in mind you'll have to be wary of quoting numbers from it.

Balf

Add China to MmmBalf's advice, too.

Are those hearts down the side of the Victoria stamp? Would that be the first heart stamp as in I Love . . . ? The colour seems to match the (possible) hearts also. Or maybe those are just a design element that I am looking at upside down?

Nicely centered Vancouver Harbour stamp Rod!