1854 Victoria State Stamp 1 Shilling Octagonal

The 1854 octagonal stamp of the state of Victoria pre-federation Australia was an interesting addition to the Victoria stamps as it was designed, crafted and printed locally in Victoria Australia due to a shortage of materials and long delay in transport from Britain, and a high demand in the colony for higher rate of postage.

The design uses a side face image of Queen Victoria. The die (or stencil) was crafted by Campbell and Fergusson Pty Ltd and then transferred to stone for lithography printing of the stamps. They were printed in sheets of 100, 12 rows by 8 Lines with additional stamps in Row 6 and Row 9 to make up the 100 on the sheet. The first run was imperforated and continued this way until 1857 when roulette machines became available. There were no watermarks on the first releases of these stamps because of the use of local paper.

The octagonal shape was the first use of this shape for stamps in the colonies of Australia, with New South Wales having used the sextagonal for it 1854 issue, I think Victoria wanted to go one better and strived for the ogtagonal shampe. When you compare the designs, the Victorian is a much cleaner stamp but the New South Wales is far more detailed in its design.

Catalogue values vary depending on condition with a mint good condition around $900 at the time of writing.

The quality of paper used for these stamps is of lesser quality than earlier stamps as it was sourced locally because of shortages from Britain at the time.

The octagonal one shilling Victoria state stamp remained in circulation until the end of the 1800’s with various key dates in 1857 when they were rouletted and then in 1859 Robinsons took over the printing and introduced perforations. In 1891 a reprint of the original was ordered using reprints of the original die, but these were printed on watermark paper using V over Crown and 12 1/2 peforation size.

1854 also saw the release of a 6d Orange and a 2 Shilling Green. As these were also produced locally using wood blocks they are known as the woodblock series of Victoria and sometimes the octagonal falls into this category known as a woodblock stamp.