15c Large Queen On Pirie Paper Without Watermark - How Do You Identify It

So my current project is making page inserts for my Canada collection (I house my collections on Vario stockpages, and use page inserts as keys to identify which stamp goes where on a page). Currently working on the Large Queens.

Unitrade 2016 lists the Pirie Watermark (30d) and then a Pirie Paper not showing any of the watermark (30vii).

How in the devil does one identify a 30vii? Not finding anything clear saying how to tell if the stamp is a 30vii vs a 30a (both are greenish grey, both are perf 11.5 x 12, so I assume it must be a different type of paper)

Unitrade says 30vii is on Script Watermark paper with horizontal mesh, but versions of 30 were also printed on horizontal mesh (Duckworth III and Duckworth X papers).

So, anyone able to help explain to me how you tell if a stamp is 30vii vs 30a???

DJCMH

I believe the Pirie Paper is a very thin paper, almost like an onion skin type paper(paper used for tracing drawings).

you could ask check out
https://goscf.com/t/43850

Trodent

Could you please share some pics / scans of these inserts? What do they look like?

I thought I should support this question a bit -

I am against the Unitrade catalogue creating sublistings for papers unless they have a distinct identifier. It creates confusion for most collectors. The Greene Foundation is able to expertise by means of their reference collection, which includes a sheet of stationery.

The Pirie paper used for a portion of the 1874-76 fifteen-cent Large Queens is relatively thick - 0.0035 inches and up by micrometer. It is off-white in tone. Only 7 or 8 stamps on a sheet of 100 would have shown a portion of the script watermark. Printing was done with the paper grain used in horizontal orientation and on the smoother "finished" side. On all known genuine examples, the script appears as reversed (or inverted and reversed) on the gum side.

The thread referenced above contains useful information. The two stamps pictured appear correct to me. The latent diagonal "ribbing" effect is relatively more pronounced than other papers used on the 15 cent in period but Galeoptix is correct - all papers of the period show it, and it cannot be used as a positive ID.

It is not thin paper. I'm not sure that this will help but here it is.

pascoe - here is the first draft I've just finished for the Small Queens - based off the listings in Unitrade, Michel and Gibbons.






I try to maintain as close to a chronlogical order in my organization so I have the First Ottawa and Early Montreal Small Queens before the 1875 5c Large Queen and the later printings of the 15c Large Queen (see the middle page).

This is still just first draft, have requested the Hillson and Nixon work on Small Queens from the APRL so I can do some more research on the relationship between shades and perforations. I will likely add some more shade/perf varieties that are not given unique status in the catalogs, but are clearly different enough to me to make me want to include spaces for them - which of course is why collectors design their own pages, so they can include what they want!

archerg and jimjung thanks for the response. It would be nice if Unitrade would provide more clarification so that anyone using the catalogue would be able to understand how to tell a Pirie from a Bothwell if they have never seen either in real life, but such are the ways of catalogue publishers.