Tagging & Fluorescence

Not sure if same terminology is used by others. Perforation is done last. So, technically, I normally refer to this as a perforation shift. When I use the term design shift, it usually refers to color/plate misregistration.

For stamps that are not on pre-phosphored paper, there is minimal effort to register the tagging to the design. Because it is normally not visible to the unaided eye -- the only thing needed is for the mail sorting machinery to see any sort of tagging on the stamp.

I never checked on Canadian stamps because I don't have mint panes. But on tagged US panes of the 1970s-1980s, you can occasionally find tagging registration marks (lines, blocks) on the selvedge along with the other color registration marks.  Don't know if these appear on Canadian mint panes.  This is in contrast to the overall tagging of the 1960s, which basically attempted blanket cover all the stamps. On these overall tagged stamps, because minimal effort was made to register, you can find examples where the tagging mat edge is on the final column/row of stamps instead of on the selvedge.

I just took a quick look at the S/S and other stamps in the set. The tagging is, in fact, suppose to "frame" the design. I'll post a pic of the S/S later.

So both your 34¢ stamp and both of mine appear to have the tagging shifted downward relative to the printing. Your stamp also has the perforation shifted upward relative to the printing.

I enjoy tagging but do not know much about Canadian stamps.

Unitrade assigns premiums for significant tagging errors - such as tagging missing altogether or extra tagging bars. Including a variety of the 36c value apparently, that comes with additional vertical bars. Some of these value premiums can be quite significant indeed. Mild tagging shifts don't seem to bring any kind of premium.

Out of interest, I checked all my copies of the 34c and the S/S, and the tagging is off-centre exactly as the pictures in this thread. All of the 34c (Sc #1122) had the tagging shifted heavily to the top, on a couple with almost no tagging bar showing on the bottom. So it looks like this tagging shift is perhaps the norm for this issue.

I checked my copies of other denominations based on your comment khj and most of them are as you mentioned. Except for one 36c, where I can only see tagging on the 2 vertical sides...curious!

Thank you all for the generous comments and web links to better understand these varieties. I will definitely continue my research on this thematic.

gmot, while going through my accumulations to find other tag variations, I did find a Double Tag of the 36c. It is Unitrade #1123i. This is the difference between a 75c stamp and a $20 stamp!





I guess there is a good side to confinement!

FDI

Nice find FDI!

I do enjoy looking at my Canadian for tagging oddities sometimes. Although only for the general tagging - I find the Winnipeg tagging far too finicky to detect personally.

Canada #1123i 36c from the CAPEX '87 issue.

Here is an other find of a Tagging variety that I could not find anywhere else. Contrary to #1123i where you have the GT4 all around plus two vertical bars on the left and right side, this one has only one bar and stops at the bottom of the design instead of going right through like the the varieties.

Could not find in the On-Line Tagging catalogue nor on Ebay or other mimilar sites. Perhaps some of you have seen this before?





FDI

renden I use Unitrade and I had noticed the note you are mentioning.

I have attached a copy of 1123i that I have and the other one that has only one Bar.





On the upper stamp we see the GT4 and the GT2 tagging and when we look at the lower stamp, we have GT4 but only one vertical bar that does not go down to the bottom of the stamps.

That is were i'm puzzled a bit as this can't be 1123i as it only has on bar???

FDI

Have a look at this FDI and see if there is not a match,

I went through a lot of full panes of US stamps when I used to do a lot of mailings.  It was not unusual to see this on panes of  US stamps from the 1960s-1980's.  For US, it was an artifact of the tagging mat.  Sometimes, I noticed the taggant would not adhere to certain inks, and you could see a non-luminescent outline around a certain color of a design element on a few stamps.

Don't know about Canada, but in the US, postal service basically makes minimal attempt to confirm tagging was correctly done during the production process. In the US, the most I've seen is tagging registration marks (short line segments, rectangles) which were actually made by the tagging mat. But they don't appear on most selvedge. And as far as I know, they make no attempt whatsoever to confirm tagging was actually applied. In the 1990s, they experimented with pre-phosphored paper and embedded taggant to skip the tagging step during printing.

The automated machinery is pretty forgiving -- all it needs to detect is some photoluminescence and it will process the mail piece. This is why you will see "block tagging", "bar tagging", "dot tagging", "mottled tagging"... Not like when we had to fill out those Scantron sheets and they would insist we use a #2 pencil to fill in every nook and cranny of that oval. If the tagging is insufficient or missing, it just gets kicked out into the manual processing bin. Nowadays, it's not like the mail will arrive any slower when that happens!

Canada #715 T4b - House of Parliament with tagging error

Definitely one of my preferred recent purchase. Rare enough to see a block like this with a one bar tagging error, but to have 715iii (missing spire) and 715v (light in window) with it, is even better!

Two new items this week.

Canada #716 T9, 14c Red And Black Queen Elizabeth II, 1977-1982 Floral & Environment Issue.

On this block of 6 we can see that the right tag bar is only 1 mm wide versus the normal 4 mm bar and also, that it ends short of the bottom of the stamp. This block and the single below are the actual items used as the reference in the Online Tagging Database found on the Adminware web site.



My second item, just as interesting, is a copy of #716c T3.

This one, the tagging was omitted where we should normally have a GT2 tagging. Also, the red color is partially missing. These are from transitional sheets with weak red printing. There are 65 stamps in total in this transitional mode. As per Adminware, this is position 22 on a pane of 100. Also refer to the note in Unitrade catalogue.