Very Rare KGVI Collection

This collection is about 90% complete as there are still a few major varieties and very thin papers to locate. Two of the stamps on display is a very thin £2 and very thin £2 with roller flaw, both are very rare and the latter believed to be unique, both are supplied with Ceremuga certificates.

The blank blue squares are stamps not yet located.

Very nice indeed. Thanks for sharing!

Wonderful presentation of those difficult to find items. Good luck on filling in those missing varieties. (I'll keep a lookout for them here in the States.)

Thanks rdavid. The collection as it is now had taken a long time to collect and hopefully in the not to distant future I will be able to find a few of the missing stamps, especially the £1 very thin paper and the W.C.G. McCracken £1 Coronation specimen, believed to be less than 200 overprinted.

Thanks Partime. It is likely going to take a long time finding some of the stamps missing here in Aussie. I didn't think of searching overseas, thanks for keeping an eye out for some of the absent stamps, let me know if any are found.

If you like I can pm a list to you detailing them so dealers (or stamp shows etc) would know the type being searched for.

That would be helpful. I know one local dealer that may be of help in that area.

Brilliant stuff Rob041256

Thank you for sharing. I enjoyed the newspaper article. Those sorts of things always give colour to a collection.

I see numerous great shades I was not aware of. I'll have to reread the Australia section in the CW cat to see what they list. Extra interesting given that many of your shades occur in the same years of printing. Great presentation ... Have you showed this to Dickon Pollard?

Thanks. I thought the article would give a little spice to the once "illegal" stamps so collectors will know the history of them.

It took many years finding the various shades for this collection, and the order and many of the shades are in ACSC order (Australian Commonwealth Specialists' Catalogue (some are unlisted).

Catalogue prices are not always correct and can be way off the mark. But to give an idea to the value of this particular part of my collection, the invoice value is accurate to their true value.

The £1 Coronation Specimen cost $1,750; the £2 Coat-of-Arms in very thin paper $1,650, and the £2 Coat-of-Arms in very thin paper with roller flaw $2,950, many others in that collection cost many hundreds of dollars, the B.C.O.F. collection cost over $2,000.

I just received a much awaited collection of shades of 8½d and 2'6 Aborigines, a scarce compilation, which I will be uploading today, you may find the sets interesting.

I'm being a little naive here, but who is Dickon Pollard? I just found out who he is, will be contacting him, thanks for the info.

Just put together a new series of 8½d and 2'6 Aboriginal shades.

Rob- I should not have assumed everyone who is deep into KGVI knows Dickon. I think he will be extremely interested in your research and you may guide him towards additional listings for the CW catalog. If he does list some of them, the value of your collection may increase significantly as devoted KGVI variety collectors start looking for the varieties you've discovered.

I'd like to reiterate how impressed I am with your accomplishments here. The depth philatelically and educationally may be worthy of a monograph. This would also potentially increase the value of your holdings via increased collector interest.

I just realised I didn't include the £2 Coat-of- Arms Specimen, so I uploaded an updated page with the Specimen.

I noticed you appeared to measure the thin paper on your display. Thanks for posting the stamps.

I have always just compared the back of the stamp against black paper and noticed that the thin paper stamps are highly transparent compared to the "normal ones". Is there a certain width that is considered the thin paper, or is the visual method that I use okay?

The Commonwealth Catalogue delisted the thin paper issues from the 1948 high value set (SG 224a-224d and Scott 218-221) except for the 5/, but like you I have found them on the higher values also.

Spectacular presentation Rob, thanks so much for sharing it.

Hi KGVIStamps

Quite an appropriate name for this particular part of the forum. The transparency of a thin paper compared to a normal paper is a good way to identify them, and the accepted width of a thin paper is 0.08mm or less.

The visual method is okay, but using a micrometer gives better accuracy and in some cases more value to the stamp.

Normal paper thickness is 0.11mm, the thickness of a thin stamp in the ACSC is 0.08mm, the 5/- and two £2 stamps shown are 0.085mm.

Did you know that some thick paper stamps of the KGVI era show a degree of transparency giving a slight impression that it is on thin paper.

This sometimes occur on the £1 coronation stamps and in the Coat-of-Arms, but luckily thinness for both comes with a deep shade caused by ink saturation, and there is only one thin paper of the coronation series and that is the 1949 printing.

McCracken used two paper thickness for the 1949 coronation issue, the thin paper was a very limited printing of 160,000 and was only distributed in Sydney, so all used copies would have a NSW postmark.

A little known fact is that McCracken also used paper originally supplied for use with the Ash printings (quantity unknown) for the 1949 printing (one is shown above in the display). McCracken favoured thin paper, and unfortunately the ACSC does not mention thin paper for the £1 printings of 1949.