Austrailia And Nova Scotia - Same Stamp.

Hi guys...nothing ground breaking, but look at these stamps (taken from Scott catalogue and fuzzy - sorry), they are both the same..Nova Scotia 1860 - 1863 and this Australian stamp 1860 - 1869...Wonder how many other stamps from around the world are duplicates from other countries...

Hi Wert
They are known as key plate varieties. You can change the currency and country name in the upper and lower plates and hey! another country. Makes the job very easy for the stamp printing company. Most of the French, German, British, Portugese, Belgian and Spanish definitives were like this from mid-19th century to mid 20th century. My avatar, for example, is an essay for a British Southern Africa key plate variety.
Ta ta, Tim

Hi Tim H, and you forgot about the Nethetlands in that list! I have never heard these referred to as "key plate varieties", but is that the same as the so called "Omnibus Issues"?

Peter

Peter, thx for the correction and addition to my knowledge base. I guess there are others, too. Malaysia States (tigers, sultans, etc.)

It's not a key plate, the 2 queens are not the same engraving, I get other pics to show you ..on the one of wert look at the chin

I'm willing to be corrected, but I don't think "South Australia" and "Nova Scotia" are on removable duty plates. There are slight design differences.

The first "key type" stamps are said to be the sitting Brittanias used for Trinidad and Barbados, which also popped up in Mauritius several years later. The first "key plate" stamps are attributed to De La Rue in 1879, with separate key plates and duty plates.

edited to add:
Here is a Mauritius of the sitting Brittania key type:

Here is an interesting story which also involves a Nova Scotia Stamp.

The Kingdom of Hawaii began issuing crudely designed stamps in 1851, and for 12-13 years were lambasted by the stamp world for having ugly and crudely designed stamps such as the one below:




According to hawaiianstamps.com (an excellent site by the way), the Hawaii post office was so stung by the philatelic press that a clerk in the Honolulu post office, William J. Irwin, designed a 2c orange red stamp based on the Nova Scotia 10c stamp. The new stamp featured a portrait of King Kamehameha IV and was printed by the National Bank Note Company of New York and issued in 1864. The stamp was also perforated, which was a first for Hawaii.



This stamp was followed over the next few years with additional stamps of a similar design featuring various royal personages.