Canada Small Queen Help.

Wow BeeSee....quite the colour differences...So what colour do YOU think that stamp is...

Red/Brown
Red/Orange
???

Robert

What source do you use for your small queen ID's? I have the Unitrade catalog and even then I can be stumped at times.

Welcome to the club knuppster59...Small queens are some of the hardest stamps to work with (next to Newfoundland stamps)

That is why even though I have some knowledge and depend on BNAPS and my friend who is the most knowledgeable George stamps and small queens and large queens, it is a ongoing struggle.

Robert

Robert, after placing your stamp next to mine, I have been re-thinking the colors. I also compared them with a 6c brown, as seen below.

I think what I have been calling brown is closer to red, so maybe a more accurate description would be red-orange. And your stamp seems almost closer in shade to my Carmine Rose. What is the date on your? It seems like DE 1/88 or FE 1/88.

6c Brown

I believe the date is FEB 1st,1888 BeeSee

Robert

I am very leery of sorting by date of use. Date of use can only eliminate printings after that date. The post office was known to put new stock on top of old when replenishing supplies of stamps so there can be late usages of earlier printings. One needs to look for paper varieties and perforation varieties as well as color. Also the position of plate dots is useful and well documented. I have collected Small Queens for quite a while and still get stumped by the colors. One has to realize that each batch of ink was hand mixed, and they didn't have the equipment to mix every batch identically. They even used different pigments at times. Color grouping can be helpful but the colors listed in catalogs are for a somewhat general shade grouping and not an exact color.

Mike

ice

Very true Mike..When I took graphical arts (Printing) in high school, we did not have huge runs, but when we did, and some times had to open a new ink supply, the colour was off slightly..We didn,t care and I suppose the post office probably felt the same way..They were not into supplying a constant product to stamp collectors, but it is a business..MONEY was at the fore front of all their decisions.

Robert

I couldn't agree more Watermark. That is why I struggle to place colors on the stamps in this posting .

I'm not really a SQ expert but I usually put the stamps that have the shade of the middle stamp in the original question into the Unitrade 41a and 41b grouping.