Requesting Some Help With A Couple Of King George V Covers

Hi, I'm both new to this forum and collecting.

I'm trying to identify the stamps on these two covers:



They measure perf 8 and they are both imperf along the horizontal so my thoughts are Scott 125 and 126. I'm pretty sure the green pair is 125 but I really have to question the yellow pair because of that wide blank space along the upper edge. It seems much too wide to be a margin and I don't think it's selvage because it's not separated by a perf line. Or is that normally what selvage looks like for an imperf / partial perf stamp?

Hi Psylent,

The 1 cent yellow looks like it is a Scott/Unitrade 126a, cut from the top of the sheet. Whereas the 2 cent green is most likely Scott/Unitrade 128. It is also possibly from a sheet of Scott 128a, if the top/bottom straight edges look like scissor cuts and not parallel (cannot determine at this resolution).

- stamporator -

Thank you kindly Stamporator.

It looks like the top/bottom edges of the 2c green are perfectly parallel so that would confirm 128. (I just noticed 2c #128 is the same color as the 1c #125 which is why I got tripped up and thought it was 125)

Since there is no catalogue value listed in Scott for a pair how would I extrapolate the value of the 126a pair? Would I double the value for a single (2 x $7.50) or would I take half of the value for a block of 4 which is listed at $55?

psylent, what you have is not half of a block of four, but just a strip of 2.
Now, if your items are entire covers they may be worth more than just the stamps on them, but you would need to check with a Unitrade or other Canadian catalog.
You could also check to see if similar covers have sold on ebay.


Peter

Thank you Peter but I'm a bit confused. Are you saying the 1c yellows are from a strip of regular coil stamps? This would make them #126 not 126a. Is that correct?

Or are you saying that they are 126a and that some 126a's were cut in strips as well as in sheets of 4?

I didn't think regular coil stamps (126) would have a wide top border like that but I just read on the Ottawa Philatelic Society site that in 1915, to alleviate a shortage, the coils were cut from regular sheets in strips of 10 and pasted together. I suppose then, that these ones could have been cut from the top of the sheet (as Stamporator mentioned) giving them that wide top border.

...and by the way, both items are full covers and I found the associated values in the Unitrade catalogue. Thank you for the tip Peter.

...sorry, I get what you are both trying to tell me. The 1c yellows are in fact 126a as a strip of 2 cut from the top row.

I found this photo on Hipstamp of 126a and 128a and it finally clicked for me: