1860-1881 Perforate Issue Queensland State Stamp Australia Pre-Federation

Queensland became its own state in 1852 after graduating the Moreton Bay District of New South Wales. the 1860 perrforated issue of Queensland saw the state continue its own identity with the depiction of a young Queen Victoria encircled with the State banner. Issues of this stamp stretched across the entire 21 years of its printing with changing colours and denominations and increasing denominations as market demand rose in the state.

1d

This was printed in red, orange andpink and within these colours, as with all state stamps of the time, variations abound with faded dye colours, poor dye mixes and bad printing runs. Watermarks were used to protect these stamps and also varied over time.

2d

Interestingly there was only one issue of the 2d in Blue.

Higher Values

The 3d came in Brown and Grey-green, 4d Lilac and 4d Yellow, 6d Green, 1 Shilling purple, grey, olive and 2 shilling blue. The higher denominations were mainly used as revenue stamps for government and business fees and included 2 shilling 6d red, 5 shilling rose, 5 shilling brown, 10 shilling brown and 20 shilling Rose.

At the time of writing catalogue values for these stamps ranged from $150 – $3,250 for mint examples and $10-$675 for used examples. Again, catalogue values do not truly relfect market values and should only be used as a guide. Anyone who is trying to recreate a full plate for example would pay higher than catalogue to complete a full plate.

Perforations

This was a ‘new technology’ and the earlier stamps have a very rough (from today’s standards) perforation which later became more condensed in the gaps of the perforation to allow better separation of the stamps. The differences in perforations across this series is what can make them more valuable to collectors.

Watermarks

There were several watermarks used across the entire stamp issue and these can help to identify the year of production although there is some overlap of them.

There were two stars used the large 16mm and the smaller 13mm and it is not until you have seen a lot of these stamps that the naked eye can tell the difference. There was a period in 1862 when the stamps were printed locally and there was no watermark on them. 1866 saw the introduction of Queensland Postage Stamps sheet watermark being superseded in 1868 with the Star Queensland watermark. This was then changed to the Q Crown watermark and I have been lucky enough to see both in real life. Below is the table of watermark dates for reference

All of the denominations in this issue are highly collected for the amount of variations and they will make a great addition to any collection.