Nigerian Stamps and Postal History

This week's post was quite short, as I was only starting my examination of the different perforations on this stamp. My examination of the previous issue had indicated to me that the classification system used by Gibbons for the perforations is too simple, because it treats several distinct perforation measurements as being the same. What I mean by this is that Gibbons lists 14.5-15 and 13.5-14 as the basic perforation measurements. The problem with this is that in the first Waterlow issue, there are actual measurements of exactly 15, 14.5, and 14, all of which look quite different from one another. A variation of 0.2 of a hole is not that different visually, but a variation of 0.5 hole is noticeably different. So, in studying this issue, I wanted to see of the same trend held true. Although I am not finished examining all of the halfpenny stamps in my possession, it is clear that the same trend does in fact hold, and that in addition to the three perforations mentioned ab...

I see that I missed posting last week about the Second Waterlow Issue of Niger Coast Protectorate. Facebook issued me a temporary sharing ban last week and because of that I did not share last week's post to this blog. So, this week I will give you the hyperlinks to both this week's and last week's post, as well as my synopsis. Last week I wrote an overview post for the Second Waterlow issue of Niger Coast Protectorate. This issue is the unwatermarked one that was issued with the new designs incorporating the name "Niger Coast Protectorate" and no mention anywhere of "Oil Rivers". I discussed the general aspects of the issue and gave detailed printing data from Ince and Osborne for all the known printings. You can read that full post here: https://brixtonchrome.com/blogs/nigerian-stamps-and-postal-history/the-1894-second-waterlow-issue-of-niger-coast-protectorate This week I looked at the halfpenny green in detail and covered all aspects of...

This week's post is much shorter than usual, as I am finding it necessary to write shorter posts if I want to have any chance of being able to continue to post on a weekly basis.  Today's post finishes off this first Waterlow issue, with a detailed study of the perforations on the 1 shiling black and then a quick look at some of the postal history that can be found from this issue.  In terms of perforations, my detailed study turned up some 36 different measurements. Most of these were very close together, but it was common to have different measurements on three or sometimes 4 sides of the same stamp. By far, the most common perforations were variations of 15 and 14.5 x 15. I proposed that I believe the Gibbons practice of grouping 14.5-15 and 13.5-14 together in the same ranges to be too simplistic, and I argue that there are really 6 basic measurements, that also exist as compounds.  Postal history is scarce for this issue, and much of what can be fou...