Need Help From Pros In Australian States

Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen.

I need help from Pros in the Australian states stamps, New South Wales, to be specific.

I am sort of a Stamp Collector, and I recently came over an interesting stamp.

I tried to find an information on it but couldn't.

It is a New South Wales stamp, design A11 (in scott's catalog) 5 penny green. It has perforation 10x11 and supposed to be watermarked #54 (small crown and NSW), but instead it watermark double lined very large letters HT (I can only see part of watermark) and line going above letters across the whole stamp.

If you can shine a light for me on this stamp I would be very very Thankful.

Thanks you very much for any help.

Dan.

Welcome to Stamp Community Forum, Dan!

Just to make sure we are all on the same page, can you upload a scan of the front of the stamp, and if possible, also a high contrast scan of the back of the stamp so we might be able to check out the watermark (you may have to play with the scanner settings a little, or you can just take a pic of the stamp sitting in watermark fluid).

Thanks!

Kim

Hi danko, and welcome to the forum. I specialise in Victoria, but I can still give you some information that should help.

The colonies of Australia ordered their stamp paper from London, but frequently the supply of paper with the correct watermark would run out (it was a long way by ship ). In this instance they would either borrow paper from another colony (they all used different watermarks and manufacturers), use paper they already had with a different watermark (so you get stamps with the incorrect numeral) or as a last resort use paper from a local source.

Paper for the some of the early NSW issues was supplied by the British paper manufacturer T.H. Saunders, which was watermarked with double lined capitals of that company.

So it would appear that when they ran out of paper with the crown over NSW, they used some of the left over earlier paper, and what you see is the letters T & H double lined.

I would still like to see a scan of the stamp, there were many issues of it with varying watermarks.

Hope this helps.

Balf

G'Day Danko and to the forum,

Isn't the watermark reversed so it reads T H backwards like some of the N.S.W.& crown and Victorian & crown watermarks

Wow, You Guys are awesome.

Thank you very much for the help.

I will upload scans in a few.

Ok, here are the scans.






Yeeee, finaly, got it to work

Very nice, Dan.

I needed a reference pic for the TH watermark.

Thank you!

k

Glad to be of any help.

For classification purposes, this is scott #65i correct?

If the perforation is 10x11, then yes. That is the only catalog number for that stamp that is 10x11, so the watermark won't matter.

However, I would annotate it as 65iv. In the absence of a listing or a specialty catalog, many dealers add the "v" to indicate a known variety. If you just listed 65i, it may not catch someone's eye.

Yes I would say that was the correct Scott # - although a word of caution. Don't rely too heavily on Scott for Australian colonial issues. Scott is a fairly simplified listing, and can often be misleading or at times downright incorrect. This period of Australian postal history is extremely complex - so much so that even here in Australia there is no specialised catalogue of State stamps! The closest thing to a full listing is Stanley Gibbons. Brusden White has recently done the 1901-1912 period. It's rather bizarre. It's been a much maligned area of collecting, for years just shunned by collectors as being too complex, particularly Victoria. The up side of this of course is that Australian State stamps are relatively cheap compared to their scarcity. But I ramble

Yes, if you were planning on collecting Australian States I would go buy SG, unless you just have the odd few. At least Scott listed the different perforations here, most of the Victorian section lists them as a group. It's not exactly right, but for your purposes close enough. Btw, did you measure the perfs yourself?


It's a nice stamp, good clean cancel full on and yet it doesn't obliterate any of the stamp design or wording. And nice shot of the watermark.

Regards
Balf

This watermark is not TH from T.H. Saunders but in fact TH from the end of the word SOUTH in 'New South Wales Postage' found at the upper and lower edges of the sheet.

An example can be seen here:
https://goscf.com/t/64924

I would add a note of caution about the identity of this stamp. According to Stanley Gibbons the last printing under State control was 1890. The next printing according to ACSC was 1903 in the Federal period.

The cancel appears to be July 1906 which would place this stamp well into into the Federal period.

A very careful check of the perforations is needed here. I do not have any diadems to check perforations.

Regards
Frank

Frank, the postmark appears to be July 6, 1893.

Well done Fairdinkum, your advice is excellent, and I'm fair dinkum about that comment, hope I'm not coming tbe raw prawn with you, old mate.

With regard to States' stamps issued before and after Federation (1 January, 1901, there were printings on state design paper and on Commonwealth supplied paper in the period until January 1913 when Australian commonwealth stamps were issued.

It was not until 1910 that each States' stamps were valid in all other States.

There is an argument that the first true Commonwealth stamps were the postage dues issues of 1902, but these were not valid for use in Victoria.

The point at which States' issues became Commonwealth issues is quite subjective, really.

States issues became commonwealth property on 1 December 1901. This was the date of effect of the Post and Telegraph Act 1901.

Regards
Frank

Hi Frank,




This was the first appearance of the 5d perf 10 on SG Wmk type 40.

This stamp was being printed by the NSW authorities right up to November 1900.