Pick Of The Day - Sg125 Constant Plate Varieties

Here are a couple of varieties I got from my father long ago. His album has three pages - about 60 stamps - of varieties for SG125, many of which are not included in ACSC. These two are in ASCS.



These stamps come from Plate 6, position 22 and Plate 2, position 8

At a later date, if there is any interest, I'll post some of the varieties not listed in ACSC and see if anyone else can confirm the positions.

Even though I do not collect Australian stamps ( my apologies! ) I do love varieties. Thank you very much for posting these and the future ones!


Peter

Peter:

Even Philistines do go work. But how can you ignore Australia, particularly their KGV side faces and Kangaroos, if you like varieties?

Frank.

Well, in view of the totally underwhelming response, I've decided to go ahead anyway with some constant plate varieties which are not listed in ACSC and see what response I get.



1. Plate 3 - V/38
2. Plate 1 - II/60
3. Plate 4 - VIII/45



4. Plate 4 - VII/16
5. This looks like the "Ferns" variety in Plate 4 - VII/54 but this was supposed to have been retouched during the small multiple watermark printing. On checking the stamp out, it turns out to be from the large multiple watermark printing. It's a sad day when you find out that your father is not infallible!
6. Plate 4 - VII/29

For those not familiar with these position identifications, the master sheets were printed using 4 plates. Each plate printed 2 panes (left and right) of 60, separated by a gutter. Each Pane had 10 rows and 6 stamps per row. This Plate 1 printed Panes I and II, Plate 2 printed Panes III and VI, and so on. Thus stamp VII/29 is the 29th stamp (stamp 9 in row 3) in Pane VII, printed using Plate 4.

I have no idea how my father identified these positions so any confirmations would be much appreciated.His album page is titled "Constant Plate Varieties" and I suspect nothing of this nature made it into his album unless he had duplicates or some external source of verification.

A very nice display of KGV varieties.

Nice idea for showing the varieties ITMA

BeeSee/Rob:

I can't take credit for the display. These came from my father's album, from a page you can see at:

http://thehowards.ca/philim/AuAlb29.jpg

He did up these pages in the 1940s and 1950s.

Are those inset drawings from a specialty catalog of your father's?

Phil:

My dad was much like us lesser mortals and used the Australian Commonwealth Specialist Catalogue. Unlike todays version, this was a soft-covered book barely over a quarter of an inch thick which covered all of Australia's stamps to the late 1940s. I still have it but have been unable to locate it for some time. I'm planning to move this summer from Ontario to Prince Edward Island so I'm hoping it will resurface during that process.

The illustrations of the varieties he did himself. Starting from a blown up (about 2 times, maybe a bit more) mono photo of the entire stamp, he cut out the area of interest then used correcting fluid to represent the variety. By training, he was a draughtsman so he had the appropriate skills for this and for laying out his album pages.

Frank.

Wow, very impressive. Thanks for sharing.

Fantastic work by your father! Great of him to pass it along to you!

Please continue to post close-ups!!

You asked for it - You got it!



1. Plate 3, VI/27: Retouched shading lines upper right
2. Plate 3, III/37 ACSC 82(2)f: Four breaks in shading lines at top



3. Plate 2, VI/4: Scratch above left of crown
4. Plate 4, VII/13: Rounded top left frame corner
5. Plate 4, VII/31 ACSC 82(4)fd: Nick in left frame. This is State 5 of a flaw called "Wattle Line" which seems to have had consequences across the whole stamp. The original "wattle line" was a scratch across the wattles from the upper left corner to the bottom of the pearls on the crown (variety f of earlier issues).

Then State 2 included a white tick just to the right of the point at the bottom of the left value tablet (variety fa of earlier issues).

This was corrected by re-entry creating State 3 with what looks like a small feather pointing upwards from the emu's tail in the white space inboard of the right frame (variety fb in this and earlier issues).

In State 4, 9mm of the upper right frame are missing (variety fc in earlier issues).

ACSC notes that variety fd only appeared in January 1935.

(ACSC numbers are from pages dated 1994 in my catalogue.)

Plate 2, III/31 I and A of AUSTRALIA joined
Plate 4, VIII/25 N and Y of PENNY joined (in ACSC)



Plate 4, VII/4 Mark above cross on crown
Plate 1, I/16 Repaired lower frame correcting variety noted in ACSC



Plate 3, V/12 Crown slopes down to right
Plate 1, II/10