tps.org.au

Dave

Do you recall where McNamee recorded that Nettlefold label on a Tatts cover?
From McNamee's book "Beating the Odds" (2002), we know that cover can't be
earlier than 1902. Perhaps his bibliography might help. If need be, I can try
near the end of this month at the RPSV library.

Bill

Here is a short note on the 10d Sideface, going beyond what Basset Hull recorded in his book. Basset Hull wrote a short note in Philatelic Record for February 1888 on the figure-watermarked stamps of Tasmania in 1870-1871. The Post Office must have been disappointed to find that the new plates for p...

On revisiting The Courier , No. 36, we see on page 18 an image of a slip of paper from the GPO advising of stamps and postal stationery that were available to the public. Apparently, it was possible to buy stamps at the GPO without regard to the £5 limit specified In the Notice from 1857. Thus, one ...

The Post Office Notice advising of the discontinuation of sales of stamps at the GPO as from 1 October 1857 (except for undivided lots of value £5 or more) surely would have been treated as "expired" some time after Federation. The post office became a Commonwealth responsibility from 1 March 1901. ...

From the date of the postmark, the stamp is very likely to be watermarked Crown / A. Try a watermark detector or a few drops of watermark fluid in a small black tray. The Specialists' Catalogue, Early Federal Era, does not list this double perforation. Mixed perforations are recorded in that catalog...

The stamp should have watermark TAS type 16 as in the Stanley Gibbons catalogue. The stamp is probably dull red SG160 as I don't see any trace of vermilion as found in SG160a (vermilion-red as Gibbons says). It can't be SG171 which has TAS type 15 watermark as per Gibbons. Note that scans don't alwa...

John

Can you say what watermark is present?

Recently, I inspected an example of this label by A.J. Nettlefold and measured its perforation to be 11.4. This BB has more information about this label but to estimate a date, we can appeal to similar observations for Tasmanian registration labels and the Tasmanian type-set series from November 190...

Many thanks to Jerry for this latest post on Robert Harris. Now we know that Harris wasn't even in Tasmania when Basset Hull was writing his book on Tasmania. The bit on the Examiner acquiring the newspaper plant is interesting but we don't really know what became of the perforator that Harris used ...

Update on Harris Jerry's guess is right on the mark. After a little correspondence, here's an update on Harris. Now that we know that Robert Harris sold The Cornwall Chronicle in 1880, we may be sure that he moved to Burnie very shortly afterwards to start the North-Western Advocate at Burnie (west ...

Jerry This is an amazing discovery. Thank you for finding this obituary. It remains to be seen whether this is the Robert Harris mentioned in Basset Hull's book. A look in Trove (set up by the National Library of Australia in Canberra) indicates that The Cornwall Chronicle ran in Launceston from 183...

On page 56 of Basset Hull's book (Chapter VI, The Perforated Postage and Revenue Stamps, 1864-1870), we read of an offer by a Mr Robert Harris of Patterson St, Launceston, to perforate postage stamps for the Government. This offer was made in May 1864 but it did not get anywhere. Walch & Sons showed...

Yes, there are still great rarities to be found among the beer duties. The Bulletin of the Fiscal Philatelic Society often recorded new issues in its Fiscal Chronicle from 1908. For British Colonial issues, the Society used the Kay Catalogue, rather than the better-known Morley Catalogue. For foreig...

This case of the alleged 2/6 overprinted REVENUE wmk '1' is an instance where the published research was incomplete in at least two ways. Firstly, the wmk was wrongly recorded as '1', not '4' as should have occurred. Secondly, the height was actually 2 mm, not 1.5 mm. That omission is misleading as ...

Yes, it is wisest to do your own research as Dave counsels. That is often easier said than done. It is strange that the early collectors completely missed the Launceston announcement of the Parcel Tickets in 1886. The restriction of sales to quantities of at least 12 limits their issue to businesses...

Through the courtesy of John Hardinge, it is possible to quote the following report in the Launceston Examiner for Thursday 14 January 1858. As usual, Trove doesn't always read the text correctly so we must clean up the bugs by hand. Fortunately, this task is easy. The cleaned up version reads: HOBA...

The Specimen overprints on the Pictorials shown here are certainly bad as the items shown shouldn't exist as genuine stamps. Note that the Revenue overprints normally show genuine overprints but many unscrupulous persons have fiddled with them to create fakes. The 1d Revenue overprint shown has prob...

Basset Hull featured in the New Year Honours List as we learn from The Mercury of Wednesday, 1 January 1936. This turned up on Trove. "Members of the Civil Division of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (M.B.E.):— The report includes a number of persons and biographical sketches: Arthur ...

Pete David McNamee illustrated a 6d Parcels Tickets on a "parcel" (really a letter) to Tattersalls on page 15 of his book Beating the Odds but does not tell us the rates for this service. It could be part of a bundle of letters sent together as you surmised. It seems that the sender tried to avoid t...

Correction to previous posting: The 3d and 6d are apparently unrecorded as used before 1900, although regulations (1886) said they were available in quantities of at least 12, not singly as collectors may have believed. Certainly, they are rare. However, the usage of 1d must be prior to 1900 as they...

I had a look in Trove among Newspapers for January 1858 There was no sign of a report of new stamps arriving. I have checked the calendar for January 1858 as shown. January 1858 Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa ———————— –1 –2 –3 – 4 –5 – 6 –7 – 8 –9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30...

Very interesting discovery indeed. Do you have the newspaper reference?

There is some feedback regarding the international reply coupons described on page 175 of Malcolm Groom's and Allen Shatten's book on postal stationery to be found under the heading "Tasmania – The Post Office: regulations, publications, stationary, etc." See link http://tps.org.au/bb/viewtopic.php?...

On page 175 of the recent book on postal stationery by Groom and Shatter, we find an illustration of a 3d International reply coupon. The authors give 1891 as its date of issue. This date looks too early. The UPU is known to have introduced this service around 1907(?) The numerous member countries c...

Kevin Burt's book was published in 2018. The short title is:
"Post Office Registration Labels."

Tasmania is covered in detail on pages 33 to 39. There are a
few updates in very recent issues of Philately from Australia.