Nigerian Stamps and Postal History

This week, I will examine the printings of the 1/2d stamps from the third state of the plate. I had said last week that I would also look at the 1d stamps from this state, and the 1/2d stamps from the fourth state of the plate. However, I am a bit short on time this week, so will have to cover a little less ground than I had hoped to do. So I will leave it at the printings of the 1/2d made from the third state of the plate. According to my first post about these stamps, I had hypothesized that there should be three printings of the 1/2d stamps from this state. These printings should have been made and released in the colony between April 1894 and about April 1897. Consequently, on the used stamps we should start to see the disappearance of the barred oval cancellations and the 21 mm Lagos CDS's and the appearance of the wider 24 mm Lagos CDS's and CDS's of other towns like Badagry. Ibadan, Abeokuta and the like. As stated in previous posts the third state of the pla...

Last week I looked at the 14 printings of the 1/2d green Queen Victoria keyplate stamp of Lagos, that were printed from the second state of the plate. By my figuring, there should have been 14 printings of this stamp also that would have been made between about April 1890 and January 1894. This week it is time to look at those printings in detail. Based on the Crown Agent's practice of supplying stamps to the colony on a quarterly basis, this would translate into approximately one shipment per quarter during this period. As I have noted in many other posts about this issue, there should be very few to no late usages of these stamps, due to the very modest number of remainders that were sent back to London for destruction in 1904. Of these, it would appear that nearly all would have come from the last printings made from plate 2. Therefore any stamp that has the characteristics of the second state, but cancelled after 1900 is most likely a stamp from plate 2, rather than plate 1....

This week, I circle back and cover the printings of the halfpenny Queen Victoria keyplate stamp that were made between April 1890 and approximately January 1894. According to my notes in the first post I published on these stamps three weeks ago, there should be approximately 14 printings of this stamp made from the second state of the plate. This would correspond to just about 1 shipment every quarter during this period. The second state of the plate, as I have noted in previous posts is very similar to the first state in the sense that all of the finer details of the design are still visible. However, it is in this state that we first start to see the beginnings of plate wear. So the very beginning of merging of the hair lines at the top of the head and at the back of the head, as well as some overall loss of sharpness. In terms of cancellations, because of the period and the scarcity of late usages on these, nearly all of the cancellations should either be barred oval cancellat...

Today, I pick up where I left off last week, which was to look at all the printings of the 1d carmine stamps that were made after March 1887, from the first state of the plate. I had stated in last week's post that I expected to find approximately 12 printings from this state of the plate. As it turns out, I found 16 different printings, which could mean that either there really were that many printings from the first state of the plate during those first four years or so after 1886, or three or four of the printings identified really belong in the first group of 11 printings that were made before 1887. In this group of printings there are a number of constant plate flaws that involve the duty plate lettering, and these will be illustrated and described. Some of them were proven to have originated in the earlier crown CA or Crown-CC issues, and some are new. They are all scarce, as it would seem that they only occur once on the sheet. Group 1: Printings 12-27 From the First St...