This Admiral Stamp Has Me Baffled .

Has to be a 128. Be sure to check for wet or dry printing. I guess it could have been a paste-up pair that was soaked off, but that would be a pity.

It's definitely a 128. The perf 8 gives that away. The only question is if the left side was trimmed. It doesn't really look like it given the amount of margin, and there were stamps in the sheet these 'sidewise' rolls were printed in that had three imperforated edges.

Everything that follows is taken From George Marler's 'The Admiral Issue of Canada':

The sidewise rolls of the 2c green were printed in sheets of "400 subjects divided by a horizontal gutter into two panes of 200 subjects arranged in 10 horizontal rows of 20 subjects each, the printed sheet being cut into horizontal or "side-wise" strips which were joined together to make a roll"

Here's an image of what appear to be two rows of the first six stamps from the bottom left corner of the lower pane that shows two stamps imperforated on three sides. Is there any sign of this stamp being pasted to another stamp on the back?



To get specific, I would say that this stamp came from one of plates 15-17 that were used for 2c sidewise rolls and that this is a type SRRE12 (SR - sidewise roll, RE - re-engraved die, type 12), based on Marler's description.

Is it a straight edge on the left side?

Yes, I cropped the image a bit too close but the left side of the sheet is imperforate (as would be the right side). This is true with some printings of regular issue Admiral stamps as well. You can get non-booklet, non-coil stamps with up to two straight edges where the stamp is on a corner of the sheet.

The stamp in question is kind of cool when you think that only 1 in 20 of these types of stamps that were issued had those three particular edges imperforate.

Where these stamps sold to the public through post offices for postal postage use?

It appears so. Marler quotes a circular from the Canadian Post Office Department in 1912 where they identify a market for "stamps in rolls sold to the public for use in stamp-affixing machines". The most popular format for these rolled stamps were the "sidewise rolls" (#128), as opposed to the "endwise rolls" (#133).