Canada Small Queen Identification Table: Position Dots

That makes sense Phil - a 9 o'clock dot. Anyway, I will be sending the stamp to Ralph at re-entries.com

Here is a new acquisition, a 3c Montreal printing, with a 9 o'clock dot. The dot is very pronounced. I have been looking for such a fine 9 o'clock dot for a long time



For the record the stamp is perf 12.25 x 12.1.

This thread is really informative, thanks to all contributing

I found this 5 c with what at first glance appears to be 2 position dots - or blobs of ink - or a combination of the two...



The centering is obviously quite off, so it appears to me the dots on the right margin would have been on the left margin off the neighbor if the centering been good. Hence the dot at LR should have been a LL position dot for its neighbor - and the 3 o'clock accordingly 9 o'clock. However it puzzles me - the plates used in Montreal were supposed to have either the LL dot or 3/9 dots - but not both dots on the same plate?

I am puzzled because the dots seems to me not as ink blubs by coincidence, rather like perfect round shaped dots - and the one at LR seems to be perfectly aligned vertically for a LL dot - furthermore they seem to be in alignment horizontally. The upper dot is a little low for being a 3/9 dot tough, isn't it?

I guess I can add that the paper seems to be the type used at Montreal - and is not the rag like paper used in 2nd Ottawa. I am a bit confused by the shade tough. It is clearly not as grey as my #42's but at the same time not as greenish as my #38's . Due to the dots my opinion is that it is #38. My theory so far is that the upper dot is a freak ink blub - and the lower is a LL dot at wrong location due to misaligned perfs.

However I am confused - and curious to hear what the forum thinks

Before I even guess Jon, what is the perforation?

11.9 x 12.1...

(as a side note - I normally always consider perforations to the closest 1/4, however I use SCB's perf tool for the small queens due to the minute perforation variations)

What is SCB perf tool?

https://goscf.com/t/48116
Try it

That is an odd perforation. I have used the SCB tool and find it very accurate - as long as the scan is accurate.

As for the dots, I think they are just "freak blubs" as you say . The 5c position dots are usually further to the right, as per the image below.



I would guess it is a shade of #42, possibly perf 12 x 12.25.

@BeeSee - Thanks, I'll consider them as ink blubs then


So I thought as well. Maybe the poor scanner available to me is not accurate enough. I got your custom made Small Queen perforation gauge, excellent tool! After painstaking study using magnifying glass I ended at 12 x 12.25, just as you suspected

According to Unitrade's Identification table, 12 x 12.25 indicates it's a late Montreal print. However as I understand various sources, the 12 x 12.25 perforation will not necessarily point to either Montreal printing or last Ottawa, despite what is listed in the table in Unitrade. Other sources indicate that 12 x 12.25 was also used the very last years (1896-97), so I suppose the table in Unitrade has been simplified?


This perforation chart for the 5c was shared to me by gportch (Vice President at Vincent Graves Greene Philatelic Research Foundation), and he also generously supported the chart to be shared with 'collecting friends' . It is supporting that my 5c 'double ink blob' may be #42 from 1896/97 - again just as indicated BeeSee. I'll go for a shade of #42 then.

All of this leave me thinking it is hard to use the paper for identification - or I am simply very bad at it. The paper in my stamp certainly looks a bit better than my other 42's and rather equal to the #38's.... And it also hard to use some of the known perforations for identification, more complicated than indicated by Unitrade. Furthermore these ink blubs indicate that also the position dots may be misleading, as they might be confused with ink blubs!

Thank you for bearing with all my plundering with the Small Queens - I would suspect many others recognise the confusion?

Beesee, your 3c stamp with the dots at the lower right look like "pitting" on the plate. There are specific positions that are Pitted Plate positions. Here is are two examples of the Pitted plate on 3c SQ's. If anyone would like to find a plate position for a dot, dash or re-entry, you can try Bill Burden's Small Queen Project site but you'll have to go thru the scans to try to find a match.

http://www.wgburden.com/three_pages...artPage.html

Thanks for showing those Jimjung. I now agree, mine must be plate pitting.

Blaamand, thanks for sharing gportch's 5c perforation page. He has previously shown the 3c page.

I do always get confused when using both K65 and K66 with perf 12. If you do the math K65 is actually 12.11, and K66 is 11.93. It is a difference of .18, just under 1/4. You can easily differentiate the two when lining the stamps side by side on the long side. It is tougher on the short side.