Nigerian Stamps and Postal History

After many, many weeks spent looking at the Queen Victoria issues of Lagos in detail, we come to what is arguably the most challenging of all the Queen Victoria Issues of Lagos: the Crown CA issues of 1887-1903. With most stamps of the colony being supplied on an almost quarterly basis and a period of nearly sixteen years between 1887 and the appearance of the King Edward VII issues in 1903, this means that there could be well over 40 different printings of many of them. The issue then becomes: is it actually possible to sort these printings and identify each one, and if so, how do we go about it? Fortunately there are many clues at our disposal and tools of logic that we can use to break the task down and make it more manageable. You have already been introduced to the 1/2 green and 1d carmine stamps, which continued to be printed during this period, but it would be appropriate to introduce the remaining values that were issued to replace the monocoloured stamps of the previous i...

Today's post continues the long and arduous journey into the printings of the halfpenny green and 1d carmine stamps that I started last week. While last week's post dealt with the halfpenny green, today's post will look at the 1d carmine. As stated at the beginning of last week's post, there were a whopping 49 printings of this stamp made between 1884 and 1902. Eleven of these were made between July 1884 and December 1886. It is my goal with today's post to identify as many of those eleven printings as I can. The stamps issued before 1887 should be identifiable from a number of characteristics, that we have now become familiar with on other stamps issued at this time: Any stamp cancelled with an 8-bar oval killer will likely be from before 1887. Any mint stamp that either has no gum, brownish gum or crackly gum is likely to be from the period before 1887. The last three printings before 1887 will have the later double gum and these will be more difficult to...

Today's post begins the long and arduous journey into the printings of the two most complicated stamps of the Queen Victoria period for the colony of Lagos: the halfpenny green and 1d carmine surface printed stamps, with the crown CA watermark. The halfpenny was a new denomination, whose genesis was the invention of the post-card and the subsequent reduction in postage rates for this new and quick form of communication. The 1d carmine replaced the earlier 1d mauve and both stamps continued in use throughout the remainder of Queen Victoria's reign - a little more than 16 years. Given that the Crown Agents were supplying stamps to Lagos on a quarterly basis, or almost quarterly, this meant a very large number of printings: There were a staggering 42 printings of the halfpenny stamp made between 1885 and 1902. There were 49 printings of the 1d carmine made between 1884 and 1902. Identifying these, or as many of them as possible is the task of the next series of posts. In ...