August 2008:
New Zealand Spelling ErrorsMarch 2008: Queensland 'Bluey'
February 2008: New Zealand Scarce 35/- on 35/-
January 2008: Victoria. Unrecorded and Unissued
August 2008: New Zealand
Dave Elsmore
These Revenue spelling errors are self explanatory and of great rarity.
EIFTEEN SHLILINGS
Die I Die II
In Die II the vertical bars in the top cartouche are wider apart and the white dots left & right are larger. Read more on these in the New Zealand Revenue Catalogue
July 2008: Ireland
Dave Elsmore
Back in February 2007 the Revenue of the Month was described as follows:
A scan of this mint block of six Ireland Petty Sessions 6d blue was sent to member Peter Mansfield by member David MacDonnell of the Dublin auction house MacDonnell Whyte. Peter had emailed Mr MacDonnell, mentioning the authoritatively-held belief that the IPS 6d blue was a colour changeling. Mr MacDonnell replied: "First, let me be unequivocal. The 1861 6d Petty Sessions unwatermarked was printed in blue, perforated normally and issued thus. The unmounted mint lower left [corner] Plate No. 2 block of nine was split around 1974. The top strip of three was sold by Robson Lowe Ltd in the Wallace sale (lot 844) of 15th May 1975. ... The block of six was sold by us as Lot 992 in our sale of 7th June 2003. A .jpg copy is attached. The blue stamp is not a colour changeling."
For full size see Feb 07
I have been fortunate to pick up a used copy of the blue 6d Petty Sessions unfortunately I cant make out the cancel. I have seen one other in an on line auction with the same centring.
June 2008: Canada
Chris Ryan
Canadian Cigarette Excise Stamp
Illustrated here, courtesy of Fritz Angst, is a Canadian excise duty stamp from circa March 1943 on which a new excise tax rate of 2 cents per 5 cigarettes has been surcharged in dark blue over a previous red surcharge at the 1942 rate of 1 cent per 5 cigarettes. To the best knowledge of this writer, both this stamp and the 1942 item have never been reported before. They are listed neither in the 1976 Brandom catalogue, nor in Canadian Revenue Society publications from the 1940s. Chris Ryan
South Australia King Edward VII £5 Impressed die. It appears to have had four date slugs [one in each corner] drilled out and crudely filled in again. No impression has come to light with date plugs inserted. It is possible this was a trial of some sort with the job being aborted as only a handful have come to light. The replacement die is struck in red.
Regis Hoffman
The Uganda “Revenne” for Revenue Error
The November 1914 issue of the “Bulletin of the Fiscal Philatelic Society” describes a variety on the current Uganda revenues series: “An error in the overprint on the Edwardian postage stamps has lately been discovered. 1R green, King Edward, C.C. wmk, with overprint reading “Revenne”. (i.e. an inverted letter 'u' for the letter 'n' or is it just another 'n').
No other report of this error is known by the author. A chance discovery of this error was found on a piece bearing ten 1R stamps, and one 10R. One copy of the error was found on this heavily cancelled piece. This is the only example of this error I have seen.
Dave Elsmore
BLUE ERROR OF COLOUR
Or 'Bluey' as it is now nicknamed.
Australia's Only True Error of Colour Revenue.
The Australian State of Queensland has turned up a Blue error of colour [dated April 1969] in the very last print run of the $10.00 Swine Duty. Issued on Q/Crown upright watermarked paper perf 12.
This scheme came about after 'The Swine Compensation Act 1962' was assented to provide funds for the compensation of owners of swine destroyed to prevent the spread of disease. The scheme was scrapped mid 1969.
I myself a collector of Queensland revenues for nearly 40 years had never seen the $10 Violet [only in imperf proof format] until a small collection of Swine, Fly and stamp duty documents came onto the open market via a huge farm sale in Warwick. The town of Warwick is a 3 hour drive from Queensland's capital Brisbane. The buyer, who was at the sale, was looking for old bottles, tins, beer bottle labels etc when he spotted the page of Swine & Buffalo Fly Revenues. Once purchased this collector in turn re-auctioned the page in the philatelic market.
I have spoken to other advanced collectors of Queensland and all are missing the $10 Violet, none had records of a $10 Blue.
Although classed as modern, this error of colour is unrecorded in the Queensland Government printing records. Fact is, it shows the 1969 printing, no mention of a change of colour.
The blue is identical to the Queensland 5c Buffalo Fly revenue which was printed and issued at the same time as the Swine revenues. It is quite possible the printers proceeded to print the $10 Swine value directly after a print run of the 5c Buffalo Fly.
The $10 blue Swine is the only Australian State Revenue, error of colour to surface so far.
Tasmania records a small printing of an 8c Lemon but this was an issued colour from a 1st print run which was changed almost immediately.
'Bluey' A truly remarkable find.
Dave Elsmore
Victoria Unissued 19/-
The Australian State of Victoria has been researched to death as we know, and it is not often we get to see something new. Well, this month I have an unrecorded 19/- of unissued status.
This unrecorded late state of the die 19/- showing horizontal engraved lines to the background [the other 19/- shows a solid background] is perforated 11.6 die proof, drab in colour, on plain blue/green thickish paper, from a series of unissued stamp duties of 1879-84. All recorded unissued values [2 of each only 7/- 8/- 9/- 11/- 12/- 13/- 14/- 16/- 17/- 18/- 19/- and a single used 15/-] have been printed on plain unwatermarked paper perf 12½. So we have a one off unrecorded and of unissued status to start the new year.
