Nigerian Stamps and Postal History

This week, I complete my examination of the printings of the 1/2d green Queen Victoria Keyplate stamp. Up to this point, I have identified 37 out of 43 printings of these stamps. According to my notes in the very first post about these values there should be 4 printings of these stamps from the fourth state of the plate, one printing from the fifth state, and two printings from the new plate 2. This post will examine each of these printings. According to my earlier notes, the fourth state of the plate should cover the period from about August 1897 to August 1900, and is characterized by a further loss of fine detail in the hair above the crown, so that all that is visible is a narrow band of individual hairs in the central area of the Queen's head above the crown. The medallion shading lines and overall quality of the print impression is still reasonably good. The fifth state covers the very last year of plate 1's use, from August 1900 to August 1901, when plate 2 was introd...

This week I will examine the printings of the 1d that were made from the third state of the plate. As I had stated in my first post about this value, there should be 5 printings of this value made between April 1894 and about April 1897. This translates into just over 1 printing a year. Consequently, the quantity printed with each of these releases should be much higher than the printings examined thus far. In addition, this should mark the beginning of the end of the use of the earlier barred oval, and smaller 21 mm Lagos CDS postmarks. My examination of the 1/2d stamps from this period last week revealed that these early postmarks were still quite prevalent, and found on the majority of used stamps. So my expectation is that we will see the same thing with these stamps. As it turned out I identified no fewer than what appeared to be 8 printings. Given that the total number of printings is known, this would mean that either some of the shades are really sub-shade varieties of the...