Nigerian Stamps and Postal History

Today, I explore most aspects of the last value in the first Waterlow series, being the 1/- black, which in many respects is my favourite from the set. At least is a close toss up between this and the 2d green. The aspects that I cover today are the paper varieties, which are more or less the same as for the other values, the cancellations, which do not show up as easily on these black stamps, and the plate varieties. The plate varieties are interesting. There are three varieties that can be found on every single stamp in the sheet, two that can be found on about half of the stamps, and six that are specific to just one position in the sheet. I have been able to illustrate all but three of these in my detailed post. For the full post, including illustrations of the varieties, please click on the following link: https://brixtonchrome.com/blogs/nigerian-stamps-and-postal-history/the-unwatermarked-queen-victoria-waterlow-issue-of-niger-coast-protectorate-part-nine

This week's post completes my examination of the 5d mauve value of this set, which I started last week. This week's post will look at the plate flaws and re-entries found on this value, and the perforations. In terms of plate flaws, my detailed post gives details of six listed plate flaws and re-entries that occur on this stamp, that were listed in the West Africa Study Circle bulletin from May 1976. Two of these occur on many stamps on the sheet, and one occurs on every stamp. I give illustrations of all but three of the six listed flaws. In addition, I have found two varieties that were not mentioned in that bulletin. What is interesting is that there are very few re-entries, though the ones that do occur are quite outstanding. The only problem with them is that they occur on several positions in the sheet, so that they are not really that scarce. I have 74 mint and used examples of this stamp, which includes 1 mint pair. Careful measurement of the perforations reve...

My apologies for the lateness of today's post. I have been very tied up with the website and it took me a few days to catch up after a well deserved, and much needed 2 weeks off. This week I finished off my coverage of the 2.5d lake Queen Victoria stamp from the 1894 First Waterlow unwatermarked issue from Niger Coast Protectorate. I had covered all aspects of this stamp, except for the perforations. So, this week I took all 86 mint and used examples of this stamp in my inventory and measured the perforations very carefully with my Instanta gauge. As I had expected, based on the large number of different perforations I have found on the 1/2d, 1d and 2d values, I found no fewer than 45 different measurements. Of these 45, there were a few that stood out as being the most common: the perf. 15 and perf. 14. The Gibbons listed compound perforation of 13.5-14 and 12-13 was the scarcest of all the varieties, and in all cases, the compound came in the form of two different measure...