4 Cent Australian Queens Head Error Found.

Hi everyone. Just joined and excited to be aboard this forum. I found this 4 cent Australian queens head stamp. With a colour error blue mixed into her hair and face. Has anyone ever seen one of these. Be grateful for your input.

Try a scan. This pucture does not show anything.

It is very unlikely such a colour error occurred.

Sorry. I'll try to scan it and post it shortly

Someone likes to doodle.

Kevwilljon,

Collecting for the enjoyment of collecting, whatever that might be, is the name of the game. Don't hesitate to ask questions especially if you need basic information and especially more advanced sources of information for any possible topic. You should be able to find folks on this board a little further along on their collecting journey glad to share experiences.

My personal bias is a used stamp loses the story of its journey in the postal service when it is removed from the cover it transported to its destination. Collecting postal history adds a whole new aspect to your journey in our hobby.

Wishing you many enjoyable future days in our hobby. Russ

Here's my used copy. We'll need a better scan of yours, but I don't see any blue anywhere on mine.

Two questions to those with knowledge of Australian stamps.

On the web, I only encounter this stamp as a coil stamp with imperforate sides. When was this stamp issued perforated all sides?

What colours are identified for the printing of this stamp? The usual online suspects either do not give all, or state 'multicoloured.' At first glance, it looks like a bi-coloured stamp. Put in another way: was blue even used to print the stamp?

This 4 cent stamp was only ever issued as a coil stamp, imperforate on each side, for use in coil vending machines, usually outside post offices.
There was also a 3 cent version, black, brown and green issued at the same time, and then a 5 cent version, black, brown and blue issued in 1967, when the basic letter rate went up.

@22crows,

Thanks, that was my take-away from what I could find. The picture posted is terriblebut shows perforations on the sides. Probably, there are/were stamps on either side of OP's stamp. With this blurry picture, that may look like the stamp in question has four perforated edges.

Was this stamp printed in black, brown and (a) red (colour)?

SG describes it as 4c black, light brown and light vermilion.

So, it is highly improbable that this stamp shows a blue colour error.

Any blue patches, if at all they exist, must be due to later manipulation or external influences that caused colours to change. I question whether the latter would even be a reasonable explanation.

ACSC describes the 4 cent as "Red, Fawn and Black". There is also a slightly different version with "Deep Red, Fawn and Black". There are known varieties with "Fawn and Black misplaced" and "Pale shading on lips". I don't see any of that happening with the OP's example.