Something Missing On This Canada Excise Stamp..?

Hi guys...Take a look at these 1934 Canada excise stamps..2 of them have a letter in the bottom right hand corner...

1-Scott # FX61 has a letter 'V"
2-Scott # FX66 has a letter "M"
3-Scott # FX71 has NO letter.

These may be normal, but what is the reasoning for it..?

I know that there are hidden letters on many tobacco stamps, but I didn't know that there were on excise stamps... The Van Dam catalog don't seem to say about them... I have the almost complete set of excise stamps, so I will have to take a look to them.

If it is anything like tobacco stamps, it would be one of the way to distinguish between emission of the same denomination / same series. On tobacco stamps, there are usually two hidden letters and may not be placed at the same place each time. Maybe there is an other letter on those? Maybe it is elsewhere on the 10 cents?

I performed a check on ebay and found the following:

K on 20 cents stamps; Same place
T on 6 cents stamps; Same place
Y or V on 1/2 over 3/8 cent; Same place
T on 1$; Same place (same as 6 cents??)
No letter on 3 cents
There are letters at the same place on many other denomination, but could not read them.

It seems it is only on "3 leafs" excise stamps and all at the same place. Could they have been some kind of additional security feature?

Found it...On the 10 cent it is on the bottom left side..See the letter "A"...




CASE CLOSED

Why is the case closed? What is the explanation. BTW I'd suggest that's the engraver's initial.

I share your question, CanadaStamp. It almost seems to be like a secret mark to verify the stamp is genuine.

There is an article on Secret Marks on Canadian Excise Stamps by Thomas Fischer, which was reprinted in the Canadian Revenue Society Bulletin in 1948. I didn't run across a scan online, but I didn't try more than a couple search queries. If someone has access to it, it might have some more information.

I doubt very much that it would the engraver's initials since
Canadian stamps never have acknowledged engravers on the stamp
itself as have so many other countries.

Now it is possible that these would be the initials of the
designer(s) but why all the different letters.

Canadian stamps have had the designers initials incorporated
in a few stamps as can be seen here on a previous SCF thread.




https://goscf.com/t/10808&whichpage...adian,stamps

Except for one stamp lithograving...Scott #732...I was talking to Jim Watt about this, and he talked to the designer of this particular stamp and he told Jim he had hidden his kids first initials within the stamp...cant remember the initials...i think one was a "K".
Robert
Here is Jim...A new member of the stamp dealer..Great guy.
https://www.citystamp.ca/city-stamp...-dr-jim-watt

wert, I said that no engravers have ever been acknowledged on any Canadian stamp but some designers did
get their initials in for awhile

Besides Scott (Unitrade) 732 was printed offset/litho not recess
engraving.

According to Unitrade the designer was Robert McLellan Bateman.
He had 5 children: Alan, Sarah, John, Christopher & Rob.
No K there but take your pic

I checked my excise collection and found out that most 3 leaf excise do have a letter at the lower right location. But some do have them elsewhere like the 10 cents that wert showed and the 3 cents that have the letter in the upper right design. Some other have them in the upper right design (A fraction denomination, don't remember exactly which one).

Sorry, I don't have scans...

We certainly are not the first ones to find them??

I am resurecting this old thread here because I just found more information on these "secret marks".

The information I found is available from the Van Dam Web site (http://www.canadarevenuestamps.com/ ). There is a link there to the "Additions to the Ryan Tobacco catalogue". In this "addition", there is somewhere a PDF file (in the "Published articles" section) that is called "Secret Identification Marks on Canadian federal revenue stamps" by Christopher D. Rayan (Direct link to the page where this document is available: https://sites.google.com/site/canad...hed_articles ). This document does talk about these marks on all revenue stamps for this time period: tobacco, excise, liquor and some other. There is so much information there... This guy must have spent hours crawling through dusty libraries...

I started to build a document that was to show the hidden letters with scans and close-ups but since I found this document, I don't think I will pursue. This document gives so much information that a document like the one I was going to release is not necessary. I was sure that many documents and articles had been written on the subject, but I had yet to find them... Now that I have found this one, I have all necessary information.

So I invite you to check on the document since it is so informative with historical facts.

Edit: The forum page added the ")" at the end of the links... I corrected them.

The first link does not work.

Not Found

The requested URL /). was not found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

I just edited the links in my previous post... Sorry, I did not think to try the links...

Here is what I found on a bwdavis.com website about Canadian revenues. It doesn't tell what they mean, however.

Each of the 3 leaf excise tax stamps have hidden letters in 2 of the 4 corner ornaments.

3/20c (Hidden letters "E" "J")
3/16c (Hidden letters "D" "A")
1/5c (Hidden letters "I" "N")
9/40c (Hidden letters "H" "Q")
1/4c (Hidden letters "I" "R")
3/10c (Hidden letters "I" "P")
3/8c (Hidden letters "E" "V")
1/2c (Hidden letters "I" "Q")

1c (Hidden letters "I" "V")
2c (Hidden letters "A" "F")
3c (Hidden letters "A" "B")
5c (Hidden letters "I" "M")
6c (Hidden letters "A" "T")
8c (Hidden letters "L" "Y")
10c (Hidden letters "M" "A")
14c (Hidden letters "J" "E") #8203;

20c (Hidden letters "I" "K")
25c (Hidden letters "L" "T")
50c (Hidden letters "E" "W")
$1.00 (Hidden letters "E" "T")
$2.00 (Hidden letters "L" "O")
$5.00 (Hidden letters "L" "R")
$10.00 (Hidden letters "L" "S")
$100.00 (Hidden letters "K" "C") #8203;

The info that I listed above does not include the 2-1/4¢ stamp. I'm making up album pages for the excise stamps and would like to know what the "hidden" letters are for that stamp. Pictures on ebay and other sources are not clear enough when enlarged. Does anyone have one who can tell me what the two letters are? The best that I can make out online looks like an "X" and a backwards "J". Many thanks in advance.