Canada: #85/86 Map Stamp - Plate Varieties

Nice find.I'll have to go through mine.You could start a small collection just on this one issue.There is at least one book devoted to this one(two) stamps.I have the discolored muddy waters and couple misplaced islands etc.

My 2013 Unitrade states that the muddy water variety is caused by oxidization, and isn't a true printing variety. The four colour options listed are lavender, grey, blue and deep blue in my book. That said I've 10 copies and they all appear to be just a little different in terms of shade.

The map stamp is among my favorites! The local stamp shop here in Kitchener has a book about the map stamp, I've been tempted to look into the book and perhaps start another specialized sub-collection for this issue in my Canada collection.

Found another interesting plate variety in the lot of classic Canada I recently acquired from jamesw's auction. Not sure if it is a re-entry or just a really bad retouch. You can see the bottom cable appears pretty ragged, could be some doubling of the diagonal lines making up the design.  There are also some markings in the text at the bottom of the stamp, visible through VASTER EMPIRE especially.  The numeral boxes and the rest of the design, especially the top look pretty clean.

Here's the image, stamp on the left is a normal for comparison. The stamp with the dodgy bottom cable is on the right, you can just make out the extended lines particularly through the middle of the stamp.



Here's a close-up of the bottom cable and the lower left corner.  You can see the cable design appears doubled, or at least out of alignment, and the lower left corner has some abnormal markings.  The cable has a similar appearance all the way along the bottom.  There are also some slightly lighter lines paralleling the V and a few vertical marks in the TE of VASTER.  There are marking and inconsistencies through the entire bottom text that make it appear less clean and crisp than my other copies of this stamp.  The scanner didn't really do these markings justice, but they are visible with the Lighthouse microscope.  Anything above 1200dpi on my scanner doesn't seem to make any difference in the image clarity.  So here's the 1200dpi scan;

[Moderator note - image link broken and unretrievable]

So what do you think?  Is this a re-entry, or just a really badly done retouch?  I compared my findings to the scans on Re-entries.com but none of them seem to match.  Trimble does only list his favorite though, and mentions he will add a page for cable retouches.  I hope that makes it up soon, as I now have two cable anomalies to compare!

I think all of the examples on re-entries.com all draw attention to the text, either top or bottom, and/or the numeral boxes.  I was strongly leaning towards this example being a retouch until I found the anomalies in the text along the bottom of the stamp.  There is some extra ink going on within the bottom text, but sadly nothing really jumps out as an obvious doubling of the design.  I can't rule out the possible of some doubling, but I can't rule out an over-inking, normal plate wear and tear, or another reason for the markings either.

What are the specs on your scope ? I am in the market for a good one?

This is the classic study on the 1898 Map Stamp, a 47-page booklet by Frederick Tomlinson.  It has a lot of info in it but it's definitely "old school" - it uses text descriptions of the varieties, paired with fairly crude drawn embellishments on base photos of stamps.  There are more recent plating studies with more detail, including a 4-volume set (one volume of which seems to me to be almost useless, as it deals with a plate that was never used for issued stamps).





Ryan