#90A King Edward VII Rouletted Coil Strip 3 - Comments And Evaluation Appreciated.

Obtained the following stamp on a purchased lot.
Only information I found was from web site https://canadianphilately.blogspot....al-coil.html
which states "The first experimental coil types with roulettes were produced by the United States Automatic Vending Co. of New York City."
Late cancellation date (1923) for this issue. has no gum and hinge marks like it had gone through the mail and put in someone's album.




comments and/or evaluation appreciated

IMO - Almost looks like there may have been perfs on top of the 3rd one.

Anyway I would send it to the Vincent Graves Foundation as soon as they are able to accept material agin, for authenticity before doing anything else with it.

Both George Marler's book on the Edward VII stamp, and Boggs in his book The Postage Stamps and Postal History of Canada, mention the experimental perfs. Boggs actually shows images of three different kinds of perforations produced by the U.S. Automatic Vending Co. in 1910. None of them look like yours, I'm afraid.

Sorry the scan is fuzzy on one side. It's a thick book.



The top two images are the roulette coils, vertical and horizontal. The 60º notches were hand cut to accommodate pairs of lugs on a rotating drum which helped feed the strips through the machine.

I agree sending your stamps to the VGF will give you a more accurate answer. But the Boggs images, and your late postmark date of 1923 makes me think this is a private perforation of some kind, which may have done nothing more than to deface a nice triplet of imperf King Eddies.

Maybe I was hopeing there were some types not documented in Unitrade. But other indications had me concerned such as the cancellation date, rough top and bottom may not feed through a machine very well. Also the roulette is more like a hyphen-hole perf where a rectangle of paper is removed.

thanks for your replies.

and Photoshop wonders

This looks more like private rouletting, than Vending or Affixing machine perforations. Given the out of period usage it is more likely that it is a philatelic contrivance and not a regularly issued item.

The BNA Topics Journal, Whole Number 561, Volume 76, Number 4 (2019 fourth quarter) has an article by Tom Meyerhof entitled "The Canadian Multipost Co Ltd".

He explains that this company manufactured and sold to large mailers, 'stamp affixers,' which used coils of 500 stamps aligned sideways. Between 1912 and 1914, the Canada Post Office Department printed King Edward VII 500 stamp rolls in 1 cent green, 2 cent carmine and 2 Cent green denominations in both sideise and endwise positions.

On January 1, 1920, the Department issued the unpopular endwise stock of 3,000 1 cent and 2 cent rolls to major post offices to sale as normal stamps. No date was given as to when the production of sidewise rolls was stopped or if they were also supplied to post offices. During production, perforations were changed from 8 to 12 and thinner, but equally strong, paper was used as the original perforation and paper did not tear well at the perforations.

The original perforation and paper was OK with the 'stamp affixers' machines as they employed a guillotine action to separate stamps.

Post Offices were using the Canadian made Multipost stamp affixers which guillotined the stamps, regardless of perforation size.

Based on this article, perhaps bwdavis' stamps are from a roll provided to a major post office, which would explain the differences we are seeing with his trio of stamps. Having a margin on the far right suggests these three stamps may be numbers 498, 499 and 500 of the roll.

The Multipost machine was used in King George V admiral issue time. It seems that they were "Probably Not" used for King Edward VII issue time. correct me if I am wrong.

PS Interesting article.

I could be wrong but I have never seen pin rouletting on a affixer coil nor would I think that anyone would go in that direction. Affixer machines were about speed in getting the stamps down on a large quantity of envelopes; I do not think that rouletted perfs is what you would want in that kind of application. There are cases in the US (Kansas City) were imperf stamps were rouletted to make them easier to use at a post office window. But in a affixer machine? I'm dubious.
US private perfs http://stampsmarter.com/1847usa/PrivatePerfs.html


Don

Likely is just a philatelic creation or private venture rather than an unreported experimental coil. Note how the top/bottom margins are overly large and non-parallel. Still it's an intriguing conversation piece, definitely a keeper if one collects the Edward VII issue.