1977 Canada 1c wildflower definitive stamp with color shift
Nothing major, but a nice small EFO item I stumbled postage recently… This is 1977 Canadian 1c definitive stamp from the wildflowers series, featuring a shift on blue color (outlines and inscription) engraving.
1977 Canada. 1c flower definitive stamp with color shift (blue). Perf. 12:12½. Lithography and steel engraving. Michel 651 IA
Below is a copy of 2c stamp with similar shift (on brown color engraving), so I think shifts like these are not highly rare in this series.
1977 Canada. 2c flower definitive stamp with color shift (brown). Perf. 12:12½, cut from top (booklet stamp). Photogravure and steel engraving. Michel 652 IID.
The reason stamps look so different is simply because of different print methods. The early prints were done using lithography (sharp output) and steel engraving, later point photogravure (blurry output) and steel engraving was used.
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Dear friend,
Sorry for the late reply. No worries and thanks for the link.
regards,
ronny
Hi Keijo,
Nice find, but you are correct in stating that this isn’t that rare. In the Floral Definitives tagging errors are the valuable and more difficult to find. And when it comes to mint copies in this series, printed on the gum side errors are quite valuable. Overall, this wasn’t a series laden with EFO, but it sure was wierd ink – these stamps have a definite tendency to react negatively to sunlight over time.
Marvin
Thanks Marvin,
the sunlight bit is brand new knowledge to me… Do You mean the colors will fade, or transfer to something else (similar to some modern Australian stamps)?
Hei Keijo,
For some reason never stated by the Canadaian Banknote Company who printed this series, the inks used in the backgrounds of this lithographic.series were very prone change colour when exposed to sunlight or UV light. The series came out in 1977 and within a year “printing varieties” began to show up. Colour varieties in the old days were common, but to see so many begin to show up with modern lithographs sent up all sorts of red flags. It wasn’t to much longer when the collecting market was advised to be careful when purchasing printing varieties of this series. I’m not totally sure, but to the best of my knowledge, this is the only series in Canada that had this problem. However, any stamp exposed long enough to sunlight will change colour, it is more a fading than an actual colour change.
Although there are many actual “true” colour changes in litho stamps, this was truly a tricky series, and only truly specialized collectors would venture into collecting printing varieties of this series for it was far too easy to get fooled.
Canada has the blueberry stamp also which I believe is a error, the stamp is one full stamp and half of a stamp have you seen that one yet, need a copy ?
@Margaret… An picture would assist greatly.
(And here’s brief instructions for adding a photo: Upload some (good quality) pictures of what you have into any online photo sharing service (photobucket, flickr, picase, facebook etc), then come back here and write a new comment that includes the address / URL of the images. I (and possibly some others) will share their opinion.)