Hard Work Paid Off With This Possible Victoria Sg 359A?

Was working on a few dozens of Australian States for the past few days, which is a really hard work for general world wide collector. Found few good stamps but mostly in poor condition. I was almost ready to give up with only few common Victoria left, but decided to push till the end, and almost at the very end came across this stamp. My initial research suggest that this could be SG 359a, but please, pretty please correct me if I'm wrong.









Even if it is SG 359a, it is not in very good condition, and not terrible pricey as well. This action house claimed two sell them at $700 recently

https://www.coincircuit.com/es/stam...y-ltd-public

But still a very nice reward for hard work.

Congratulations danko - it certainly is SG 359a.

Unpriced in the catalogue because Stanley Gibbons do not have enough reliable information upon which to base a catalogue value.

A very difficult stamp to find - sale price would depend on how many enthusiastic bidders you have at auction wishing to improve their Victoria colection.

You might be so kind as to share your research statistics in this new thread:

Watermarks On Colonial Victoria (Australia) Stamps - Share Your Research

I would've said it was SG 334a based on the shape of the first circle in the crown. Compare SG Wmks 82 & 85.

Bobby De La Rue, two of the critical features with those watermarks is the direction of curvature of the crown sides reaching up to the circles and the points of contact of the sides with the outer two circles at top.

Watermark 85 (found on SG 359a) has concave sides that connect near the middle of the circles, as in danko's stamp.

Watermark 82 (found on Sg 334a) has convex sides (and hence larger side spaces within) and the crown sides connect to the edge of the circles.

An example of watermark 82 can be found here:
VIC SG 332 1896-99 ONE PENNY BROWN-RED

Thank you Fair Dinkum Stamps I can see that now

So, my congrats also to danko, what a great find!

I cannot see any watermark?

rod222, It is there, though faint on my monitor. Maybe you need to adjust your monitor.

Wow!
thanks wku, I think I see it now. Yikes!
For prospective students of Australian philately, poor example.
I was hoping for something clearer like...............
( Source:comprehensive colour catalogue of Australian Stamps)

It definitely is a SG 359a; it's unfortunate about the condition, but otherwise a very nice find.

Rob

danko that is more than pretty good for a world wide collector!

I've added a retroreveal scan of watermark 82 to make it easier to see for those prospective students of Australian philately:

VIC SG 332 1896-99 ONE PENNY BROWN-RED

The important differences from the subject watermark 85 can be seen - i.e. convex sides and joining of sides to edges of top circles.

Thanks to Rod222 for his scan of watermarks.
SG watermark 82 is the third one on his scan and SG watermark 85 (the sideways one on the original post) is the fourth one.

Note that the second Victorian watermark in Rod222's scan is very inaccurate. Catalogued as SG watermark 33, the true shape can be seen on this stamp:

VIC SG 210A 1882-84 TWO PENCE CHOCOLATE

Good stuff, thanks FDC.

The bottom of SG watermark 85 reminds me of Mick Jagger's lips when compared to the others!

Wow, this is unbelievable . I had so many doubts about my identification. I'm shocked that I got it right, and even more shocked to come across such find. Thank you all so much for your input.

I guess hard work does pay off after all. After many years of patiently sifting through hundreds of thousands of minimum value common stamps, one eventually finds a diamond.

Makes my wonder, what else I may have in the other 10 big boxes of stamps that are sitting in my closed unsifted, including few pounds of Franklins/Washingtons .

Well done danko, hard work almost always pays off.....eventually. Especially in this caper