Nigerian Stamps and Postal History

Hello everyone. I wanted to apologize for the fact that I will be unable to write any new posts for the next 2-3 weeks. I feel that I owe all my regular and loyal readers an explanation for why I am having to delay my posts, so here goes. When I started out as a stamp dealer and blogger, my intention was to focus all my attention and energy on building the best stamp stock that I could, writing top quality content and getting into a position to be able to service collectors from all over the world. This is no easy task, as I have written about many times in the past. So, when it came to deciding how I wanted to build a business online, I thought that paying a company like e-bay to take care of all the information technology, transaction processing, marketing etc. would make sense. I really thought that e-bay would act like a business partner and help my business grow, in exchange for the $500-$700 I was paying them every month. I was wrong. Dead wrong. E-bay is a member of a g...

This week I will be finishing my examination of the 2d green from the 1894 first Waterlow watermarked issue and starting my examination of the 2.5d lake. The only aspect remaining to be looked at on the 2d green are the perforations, which I will discuss now. Perforations on the 2d Green Gibbons lists five perforations for this stamp: 14.5 to 15 15.5 to 15 compound with 12-13. 13.5 to 14. 13.5 to 14 compound with 12-13. 12 to 13. Of course, just like all the other values looked at so far, the picture is quite a bit more complicated than that. The perforations that I have found in my detailed study of these stamps is as follows: 13; 14 x 12; 13 x 14 x 13; 12 14 x 13  14.4 x 14 x 14 x 14 14  12; 13 x 12.3; 12.6 x 14 x 12.9; 11.7 14.1 x 14 x 14.1 x 14; 12 14.1 x 14 x 14 x 14 14 x 14 x 13.9 x 14 14 x 13.9 x 14.1 x 13.8  13 x 12.2 x 13 x 12.4 14 x 13 x 14 x 13; 12 14 x 14.2 x 14 x 14 14 x 14; 12.4 ; 13.1 x 14 x 13.4 ; 12.1  14.1 x 14 x 13...

This week, I explore the aspects of the next value up in the series, the 2d green. This had the most ornate design of all the stamps in the set, and in my opinion, this was the most beautiful stamp in the set. Shades In studying this stamp, I have identified four shades of the green ink that was used to print the stamps. It is curious to me that Gibbons does not list any shade variations for this value at all. The individual scans below show each of these shades more closely: This is an almost exact match to the basic green shade on the Stanley Gibbons colour key.  This is closest to deep grey-green on the Stanley Gibbons colour key, but contains a hint of olive. It is a very distinct colour that is completely different from any other examples of this stamp that is currently in my stock.  This shade is an exact match to Gibbons's myrtle green shade.  This is close to Gibbons's basic green shade, but is paler.  Paper and Gum ...