Centennial Definitives: Happy 50th!

It was 50 years ago today (Feb 8/17) that arguably the most popular Elizabethan-era set of Canadian definitives made their debut ... the "Centennial" definitive series that marked Canada's 100th birthday as a country.

All of the following stamps were released on the same date: February 8, 1967:



At the time collectors did not know that this definitive series would be around for some seven years and have hundreds of printing varieties due to perforation, gum, fluorescence, tagging, sheet, booklet, coil, cello-paq, stationery, perfin, precancel and plate flaws.

Very nice set studystamps, I dont usually concentrate on post 1940 stamps , but love these.

Robert

One of the best stamp series ever, from any country.

Paul

Also one of the last definitive sets to get widespread commercial use, so there are lots of used and interesting cancels of all values in the set.

When I first read about this upcoming definitive set I was
really hoping that the higher value painting stamps
would be printed in multicolour.
I was really disappointed though when I received this (see below)new
issued announcement brochure and noticed that all would be
printed in one colour engraving.





This was the first Canada Post Office Department,Philatelic Bureau
new issue brochure printed in colour.

Here are a couple of FDCs from the Centennials, the lowest and highest
denomination.




That was when FDCs still went through the regular mailstream.

Soon as an issue was announced by the Canada Post Office
you went and bought some covers. I usually got them from the
Simpsons downtown Toronto store, always RoseCraft.
Went to the PO and got Postal Money Order, payable to the Receiver General of Canada.
Sent them undercover to the Philatelic Bureau in Ottawa
and then waited anxiously hoping that all would arrive without
being bent, soiled or written on by the mailman.
Those were the days.

I'd forgotten that these were issued on my birthday, was it really 50 years ago that I went to my local post office in Scarborough, Ontario to buy a set. The 8c-25c values piqued my interest in Canadian painters, the Group of Seven

For Lithograving who was disappointed that the stamps were monochrome:

To my eye, the muted-color, monochrome look is classic.

Nice clips Sak!

I totally agree. One colour engraved stamps are much more attractive than multicolour litho or photo ones. I have a few high resolution scans of the KGVI war issue high values printed on A4 photo paper. They are stunning. I will do some Centennials now I have thought about it.

However here is an exception which is two colour engraved stamps when the design has a frame. Compare the two Jamaica 1900 1d issues. First in monochrome red and then a much better stamp in red with a black centre. A really good comparison.

AQ

I assume that most already know about the design / name error on the 15c Centennial stamp but just in case look at this link.

http://www.stampboards.com/viewtopi...14&p=4218443

I could not find a link here but probably just missed it.

AQ

Oops! I forgot the 15¢



I seems to me that the salient argument at the time was that these were definitives with continuous printing - to expensive to do the whole colour thing.

Shouldn't they have printed the whole picture instead of cropping it since cutting off the real picture can diminish a work of art? Also,
recess line engraved stamps were mostly one colour but the quality is great.

IMO the designer did a pretty good job in trimming parts
of the original paintings to fit into the horizontal format
of the stamps.

For example on the 10c Jack Pine the square painting was trimmed top and bottom to fit horizontally
without loosing too much of the original.

For the 50c they removed a lot of snow in the foreground which
in my opinion didn't really alter the original at all.
But I do believe that the buildings on the left in the original
should have been included on the stamp.

The $1 is similar to the 50c where instead of snow a whole lot of mud was cropped.
Also they had to fit a square image into a horizontal one.

All in all now after 50 years these single colour engravings
look great compared to all these multi multi coloured labels
issued nowadays.

This series is really s[ecial to me as a stamp collector. It was my first purchase of stamps intended to become a canadian stamp collection. It started with the special plastic coffret, and I used it initially to hold my collection. At the time, it represented almost 5 weeks of my kid allocation so I was glad it was early in the year, and a few pennies left over from xmas help me make the decision to jump in the hobby. 50 years later, this is still a moment to remember, as stamp collecting provided endless hours of fun, looking through books, mail, making contacts with friends to get their leftover envelopes to start building a stamnp collection. It has grown a lot since, but no other series is larger that my 130,000 centennial stamp inventory of the 1c to 5c....which I intend to search through and classify over the next 50 yrs (assuming I can make it to 113 yrs old....)
Note: I also remember that in order to get plate blocks at the time, we needed to purchase 10 of the lower values.....per corner block