Canada Small Queen #37 3c Montreal And Ottawa Printings I.d.

I don't mind a little research but generally like to know what I have and where it belongs . Unfortunatly with Sm queens and 2 cent washingtons they all sit in stock books --I ocassionally start looking and sorting but then close them up and walk away. You'd think there would be a complete site that would have all the relevant and not so relevant information and pics by now.

I will eventually get something on my website - once I figure it all out!

BeeSee

1. the 37a in the Unitrade should read "(Ottawa)" and has been corrected for the next edition.

2. 41a and 41i will both have "(Montreal)" added after their entry in the Unitrade as they were printed in The Gazette building in Montreal.

Thanks for pointing out these "anomalies" in the catalogue.

Here are some of my Canadian Small Queens, these ones are the extras I have laying about. I had plans at one time to dive into this world of collecting, but was horn-swaggled by British KGV.

A nice selection of the 3c. value, lots of shade action happening on these ones and I tip my cap to those that collect these wonderful stamps!



Some close-up of some of the 3c value:









Have a good one,

Skilo54

Skilo: could I trouble you for close-ups of the Port Elgin and New Hamburg cancels. I have sort of given up on trying to distinguish my queens but have gotten interested in small town cancels on them as good ones are few and far between.

Skilo- Great examples of 37's and nice pics to show the colors - Learning that the 37 colors are more dull with almost a brownish hue where the later 41's seem to be more bright with the vermillion shades. Nice to see them without oxidization as well.
I mentioned before that up until about 1880ish the rule for postmasters was to not use the town/ city cancel on the stamp itself. This made it possible to return mail if stamp fell off. The practice was widely used as old habits are hard to break until the late 1890's when they relaxed the rules. Thus making clean readable cancels on small and large queens a major bonus .

No problem cynical, I have all of them scanned solo as well, so no extra work to post some scans of single stamps. Here are the ones you wanted to see along with the wing margin one, just because I think it is a stunner:

PORT ELGIN/ONT. ~ DE 9 189(2):



NEW HAMBURG/ONT. ~ OC 2 1897:



STRACHAN AVE/TORONTO ~ PM JU 21 18(X)4:



Have a good one,

Skilo54

Skilo: thanks very much. I have cancels from villages near Port Elgin that were on the old rail line but not one for the town itself. I will use your image to fill the hole. Much appreciated.

No need to use the image my friend! Send me your address through an email and I will happily fire it off to you to add to your collection, my pleasure!

Have a good one,

Skilo54

Nice scans Skilo.

Well to add to the confusion of ID's -- My previous post of the 3 cent with perf 12.5 x12.35 done both on my E perf as well as Bee See's CAD , according to a gentleman from BNAPS small queen study group is not a 37d. He states that the perfs and paper do not correspond properly with the 1870 printings. Also states that he does not trust computer perfing and doubts the stamp would measure 12.5 on the instanta perf gauge. I can agree to the paper issue, and even the perfs not being done by same machine but when perfs are mathematicaly correlated by CAD I think thats a hard one to argue.
Now the question is where did a later un cataloged perf 12.5 come from?.
Since I had this 15c large queen sitting with the suspect 3c small queen I scanned the 2 together -- Observation being the perfs look to be the same pointed style likley from the same machine ? And to give me more of a headache when I gauged the 15c lrg queen I get 12.25 (maybe a hair more) on all 4 sides. Again the assumption is 12x12 is the norm with some 11-3/4 noted. At first I thought well for 1868 they probably just rounded down but I also see a ffot note with a rae 11.8x12 so that tells me they are being precise. I won't say my computer perf gauge is flawless but so far everthing I've perfed on it has corresponded to my metal unitrade perfectly and I wholly trust Bee see's CAD calculations as well.

I agree with you Nitrolures.

I can see margin of error in an electronic perforation gauge, but there is also margin of error in plastic gauges, and the sliding of the stamp up and down a possibly poorly printed gauge can give erroneous readings.

Incredibly, Gibbons has a so-called new Instanta gauge which has different readings then the old one. However, calculated mathematically, the old one is the correct one! It is COMPLETELY unacceptable to have this new gauge on the market

[Added:] Now this poses the question: what do modern gauges like the Unitrade follow; the old or new? No wonder we get so many different readings!

Now to AutoCAD. The advantage with AutoCAD is I can insert any resolution of a stamp impage into this vector based engineering drawing program and scale the stamp to EXACT size, base on the known reference dimension of two points, say one at the bottom left scroll and one at the top. That way, the differences between perforations are also exact. When the math is done, it CANNOT be wrong!

Here is a link directly to some more samples from stamps on the DGL website (too much to post directly in SCF):

http://brcstamps.com/sq/

Draw your own conclusions and post your opinions.

Found this interesting article based on guatemalan stamps but comparing the various gauges and error percentages.http://www.guatemalastamps.com/Exhi...entation.pdf Ironically (been using that word far to much lately) the computerized gauge which was used to define the differences is the same method as the one I currently use which is actually calibrated based on the instanta "new" gauge. Regardless of gauge used the bottom line is the mathematical method used by BeeSee with the CAD program is the rules and guidelines used to make all the gauges . However until the need for more precise measurement were in demand the standard gauges measuring only 1/2 increments were acceptable. Now the new insatanta (which has been around for awhile) measures within 1/10th of a perf but still is not as precise as the CAD measurements since human error and judgement still come into play.
All I can say for now is I have a 37 or 41 with perf 12.5x12.35 which apparently is not a 37d yet no one seems to be able or want to determine what it is. Starting to think the lack of acceptable practises and the room for human judgement is what is keeping these cert companies and catalog companies in business. The way I look at it this stamp came from a pane of 100 so there were at least 99 others and if unexplainable a new notation should be made -- But then I would need a cert but the cert is useless since there is no catalog reference then there is no catalog reference because none have been certified.and on and on.

Nitro, your stamp is 12.35 x 12.5, not 12.5 x 12.35 horizontal is measured first.

I am convinced the vertical perf is near 12.5. That was based on the height of the stamp.

However, when I now measure the horizontal distance of the stamp (outside circle around the queen), I find your stamp is close to 1mm narrower than all mine. When I do it in Autocad after resizing horizontally (based on my stamps), the perforation measures closer to 12.0.

Either your stamp is narrower (shrinkage horizontally only) or your scanner is not scanning proportionally.

What I need you to do is get me the measurement of the second outside circle around the queens head. Then I can rescale in AutoCAD independently each direction.

Hillson does say that #41 exists "occasionally 12 x 12.5"

Skilo: I appreciate your kind offer, Over the years, in addition to my own collection, I have had three collections given to me. I am now at an age where I have to give some thought to where my collection is going so have made a decision not to acquire any more. I do miss getting little prizes in the mail though. Knowing you have the stamp and your image will suffice.