New South Wales Stamp ID Please

Is that white ladder cancel real? Or is this stamp a forgery? What stamp number is this please? It looks like one in 1856 but they were all imperf, this isn't. Please comment on this stamp as the white ladder cancel looks wrong to me. Thanks

Duncan

These appeared later in perforated form: 1860-63 with wmk of double-lined figure of value, perf 12 (SG 133-138 in my oldish BC catalogue - may have changed since then) and 1862-72, same watermark, perf compound 12 x 13 (SG 172 - again, catalogue number may have moved) (this last is a rarer one). Plate and colour variations on the 1860 issue. No view on the postmark, but, in general, these stamps don't look valuable enough to fake.

Regards.

Geoff

Thanks Geoff the white ladder postmark is not one I've seen before, I guess its a rarity. Do you have the cat value on this?

duncanvr, are you sure it is "white" and not just "absence of black"? The shading lines on the cheek and neck are still visible, and look similar to the areas not hit by the cancels.

The stamp looks funny to me, but I can't say what is going on.

Duncan

Sorry - I don't have an up-to-date Commonwealth catalogue. The basic SG price in 2010 was £10, but that would be for the commonest version. I'm sure someone from Oz will chime in, though!

Geoff

The postmark is the normal Sydney Bars of that period,

Pagoda

If you look between the "rungs" of the "ladder", you will see the upper black "bars" bulging upwards and the lower black "bars" bulging downwards. Then it becomes more clear that the white "rungs" are not actually straight.

The cancel is illustrated in Postal History of New South Wales, page 85, Sydney type B1M, it was the only cancel used in Sydney during 1856-1857 and is the commonest cancel found on that issue,

Pagoda

Good info, Pagoda!

I do have to admit, on Duncan's particular stamp, it does look amazingly like a negative ladder cancel after he mentioned it.

Thanks everyone this is the info I needed. Pagoda can you scan the page that shows the illustrated cancel please. I'd like to see that, the stamp came off ebay and actually claimed it was an error cancel, I had my doubts. D

Until Pagoda chimes back in with a scan of that book page (I'm always interested in seeing book page scans), here are links to 2 examples:

http://www.auspostalhistory.com/CMS...8_IMAGE1.jpg
http://www.auspostalhistory.com/CMS...1_IMAGE1.jpg

Hi khj nice covers in those links, thanks for sharing them

Of course, not mine. One can always dream...

Regarding the description, it depends on why they called the cancel an "error". I don't collect cancels, so I can't tell you if there is some other reason they thought there was an error.

Wish I had covers like that to. I think the seller had no idea what the cancel on the stamp was, neither did I really.

see



Pagoda

This is a clearer scan of the various 1856-1857 Sydney Dumb Bar cancels



Pagoda