Help With Surcharge On Canada Qv 3 Cents

Hi everyone,

I have this Canada Queen Victoria 2cent on 3 cent surcharge and was wondering if this broken vertical T bar and disturbed S is a common occurrence.

I had posted this on another forum where I received an explanation that this was perfectly normal, however I don't see many stamps like this.

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Here is a close up of the area:

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This is the explanation I got:

What you are seeing is 100% normal. The font used here does not have a 'flat' top, but concave. If you look at the tops of all the letters, they dip towards the middle and they are supposed to. Nothing is distorted or misprinted.

However, I don't understand how this can explain the shortened or "broken" T bar. Can someone help please?

Thanks

I agree that what you are seeing is normal and probably not a constant enough variety to be listed in Unitrade. One of our Canadian collectors here with more knowledge will either confirm or deny this and should be along shortly.

Ok thanks for the help Stallzer.

Of the six copies I have, only one has the beginning of a break in the "T" at the same spot as yours. I think this is normal for my stamp because the T and the S on this stamp have several small missing parts. Yours is probably the same.

What I find interesting with your stamp is the underside of the horizantal bar of the T. All my stamps show a clean horizontal bar while yours has hanging bits at each end that loop back to the left. Is this part of the T or an optical illusion because of the cancellation? If part of the T, then I would suspect a forgery.

Hi Easyone, thanks for your input.

Well to clear up your doubts about the horizontal bar of the T, the poster on the other forum says that this is normal as the fonts bend in a concave manner. These were his comments "What you are seeing is 100% normal. The font used here does not have a 'flat' top, but concave. If you look at the tops of all the letters, they dip towards the middle and they are supposed to. Nothing is distorted or misprinted."

So, putting yours and his together, this doesn't seem like a forgery but neither is it anything special or unique either.

The path of the cancellation stringly suggests that the bottoms of the "T" bar are cancellation ink.

However, the vertical bar of the "T" is broken and there appears to be a small missing portion of the underside of the horizontal bar just left of the vertical bar.



This topic should be moved into the Canadian stamp folder.

Hi BlackJag,

I didn't notice the missing portion on the underside of the horizontal T bar, hmm I think the chances of this being a forgery have increased...hehe

I think the first posted stamp (in this thread) of yours has a faked surcharge.

Most of the letters and the 2 have broken or missing bits. The S has been printed on the stamp before, then wiped out, then printed again and moved upwards to match with the curve along the top part of the letters.

I do not think the T bar down-strokes are part of the roller cancel. They are too heavy and well placed. Thanks to BlackJag for showing the postioning.


The first picture shown below is yours, reduced in total size.
The second picture is from ebay showing a mint example.

The T has NO downstrokes on the mint example, nor on any others I have seen on ebay.

The placement of the surcharge over the stamp does seem to vary amongst different stamps so the positionning is variable.

The sideways swiping strokes that occur before the 2 and letters are worrisome also. Perhaps some chemical has been used at sometime.

Thanks a lot everyone for all the information.

I know it looks like a petty thing to investigate, but I'm afraid these and other boards are the only places I can get help.

Puzzler, thanks for pointing it out to me. Will keep a note to watch for surcharges next time when buying stamps (This one came in a mixed lot, so I'm not perturbed by it).

Puzzler, I'm going to disagree and say that this looks like a normal stamp to me. The down-strokes on the "T" seem to be part of the cancel.

I have many copies of Canadian stamps with bits of the surcharge missing here or there. There are few that are fairly constant (and therefore listed in Unitrade), the rest are just a matter of the amount of ink applied at the time of printing, the thickness of the ink, the wetness of the paper, etc.

My final argument is, considering that there is little value in this stamp being surcharged (especially as it was then used), it makes no sense to make the effort to fake this. If it was inverted, then yes - most/all of those are fakes.

Hi 3Dadeo, Thanks for the input. I had the same idea regarding the reward of faking this stamp. It isn't exactly a highly valuable one (with or without surcharge) so I didn't see any reason why someone would go through the effort of faking it, unless they were faking a huge number where there probably could be some profit.

I don't have a unitrade but it seems from the posts here (yours in particular) that there isn't exactly a fixed surcharge design which could allow one to authenticate the stamp. However, the issue as you pointed out, could be more related to the surcharge process which has resulted in this outcome.

I have also seen a few of these with "disturbed" surcharges again which could be due to the process.

Well, fake or not, this one isn't going anyway, I was just curious about the difference and I wasn't aware of the Unitrade Catalog until now :)

Mindpsyche, if you are at all interested in Canadian stamps, the Unitrade catalog is a must.
A new one is just out. Many places sell them. I prefer FVH Stamps. Their price is the lowest, and they use nice stamps for shipping.

Thanks 3Dadeo, as of now, I still collect anything British Commonwealth Pre 1940s. I have a few Canada, including some small queens which I broke my head over for sometime and got no where lol. I'm trying to amass some more stamps before I decide to specialize.

Thanks again for your help.

No problem. Small Queens... yes I know what you are saying. prefer them
to Machins though.

For anyone looking for a basic image of all Canadian stamps, as issued, take a look at Library and Archives Canada (note: not "THE Library and Archives OF Canada) at http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/...30103_e.html I've pointed to the page on which this particular issue is shown. Just click around for a wealth of other Canadian philatelic treasure.

Peter

3Dadeo, I'm so afraid of Machins, that I'm contemplating just keeping them, as I like to know everything about a stamp :)

Peter thanks a ton for that amazing link, will come in very handy!