Danish West Indies 3 Cents

It might be the watermark and not a cancellation.

Thank you for the "brown" gum. My first yellow and brown viewing for DWI.

first stamp is the 1866 version, the one with the brown gum is the 1856 one...

4 more copies to get an idea from, the reason that the 1856 one is with 3 kinds of gum is the shipping from denmark to tropical climate caused the sheets to get stuck together.. and different gum were used on the virgin islands to regum the stamps after soaking the sheets (to seperate them)

St Croix regummed with a brownish gum and St Thomas regummed with a yellowish. White gum is from the original production in Denmark and unlikely to have made it to the virgin islands and thus quite rare since only a few sheets were kept.

the 1866 versions are often without gum altogether, if still intact it will be a yellowish gum, so only way to know if it's an 1856 or 1866 is from the burlage.
1866 versions are often much more faint in the burlage.



just showing off this bad boy :)

Sorsh very helpful and enlightening. Thank you so much. Wow on that #4. Huge!
It would help me so much about the burelage if you could picture the Facit catalogue where it leaves off at the #1a. I see the four types of burelage but am confused to how it relates to #2.

it's quite simple, it's a normal issue where a catalogue from a different country pass on faulty information.

#1 has burlage A
#2 has burlage C

danish catalogue list those as type Ia and type IIa.

B and D wasn't used on these issues, only on Danish stamps.

Scott and Facit have the confusing information. Thank you so much again for clarifying.
Please help again with burelage (French) verses burlage (Spanish)? Your thoughts on usage.
Same with origin of your name Sorsh. Confused North American on international matters.

Bonsoir
By the end I see that all these stamps are pointilled.
I think that Facit show a shematic burelage with continuous line?

Facit states first issue date November 1855. Other sources state April 1, 1856?

I send the end of facit description of stanmps 1 and 2

Helpful. Thank you for the catalogue page.

Origin of my name is just a nickname, from computergames, it doesn't mean anything, real name is Brian.

Burlage is the wavy lines - a background print made to prevent forgeries of stamps..

they can be hard to see, but can react with chemicals to oxidize them, that makes it very easy to see, but also reduce the stamps value.

this link to a danish auction house shows an example that is easy to see.

https://www.vf-auktion.dk/lot/15100005?pageNr=1.

not sure if links work from here, if not, i'll make some scans next time.

They printed the burelage before printing the stamps, and the burelage on the left panes and right panes were opposite each other in direction. I don't know if that means they printed one side, then turned the sheet to print the other side or if the burelage plate just had the two sides rotated from each other. That's why they state burelage A and B for the first issue and C and D for the second. There are just as many with A as with B and just as many with C as with D. The inking of the burelage is really light, so can be tough to see unless you have really wide margins, and sometimes even then.
Here's that image from above:

Great to hear from you billsey and you rinformative explanation of the burelage. So a #1 with burelage B.

or A, depends if they are from plate I or plate II.

#2 will have type C or D, depending if they are from plate I or II as well.

even with that information I still often can't tell which burlage a stamp has.. but

not sure which number the linieperforated 3cent is, but all 3 issues have exactly the same setting

if you look at the 4 examples of my 3 cents, the third one has a notch in the right frame... that is position 80 in plate II, and the same notch can be found in the other 2 issues.
and it should have burlage type B although it's very faint and I can't really tell myself.

#2 is often more rose than carmine, but listed as rose to carmine, and most commonly unused without gum.
#1 is carmine, and the white and yellow gum if washed can easily be mistaken for a #2 carmine
the only one that can't be mistaken is #1 with brown gum, it's hard to wash off, and will usually have tainted the stamp making it darker.

so, there's plenty of opportunities for headaches on these issues.

have fun :)
#1