Site News ~ Most Recent First

For about twenty years now, collectors have recognized the possibility that—contrary to Marler’s conclusions—some of the 5¢ Violet Admirals may have been printed from plates originally used to produce the 5¢ Blue.

The article “5¢ Violet Plate Tectonics” by Leopold Beaudet, published in The Admiral’s Log (Vol. VIII, No. 1, June 2004), first sparked my interest. For a long time, I have hoped to find examples of retouches on the 5¢ Violet matching those seen on later printings of the 5¢ Blue. Although that search has, so far, come up empty, I have not entirely given up hope.

That said, some meaningful progress has been made.

A few years ago, I discovered a second example of a constant plate flaw (CPV) on the 5¢ Blue, showing two nearly parallel lines in the left margin opposite the “N” of CANADA. While that second occurrence was interesting, it was not especially unusual.

Yesterday, I located a third example of the same CPV—but this time on a 5¢ Violet rather than a 5¢ Blue.

The debate will no doubt continue, but this latest find provides strong, perhaps even conclusive, evidence that some 5¢ Violet stamps were indeed printed from the same plate (or plates) used for the 5¢ Blue.

One of my favourite aspects of the Admiral issue is the largely unexplored area of plate flaws. As mentioned elsewhere, this topic hasn’t received much dedicated study over the years.

Hans Reiche was a notable exception. Working with others, he compiled an ambitious listing of plate flaws which, in 1987, was considered quite complete. Nearly forty years later, however, we strongly suspect that many more flaws remain to be discovered.

Until recently, I had been adding pages to illustrate Reiche’s listings as examples appeared in my collection. That approach, I soon realized, didn’t make it easy for others to contribute their findings. Over the past week, I’ve reworked the site to change that.

As of late March 2026, the site now includes dedicated pages—or spaces—for each of Reiche’s 269 listed flaws. Every page contains his original diagram, though many still await matching stamp images. With more eyes scanning albums and stockbooks, we can likely fill in many of those blanks before long.

If you have a stamp that matches one of Reiche’s diagrams, or if you spot one already on the site that does, I’d love to hear from you. Your contributions will help bring this fascinating but overlooked corner of the Admiral issue to life.

It has been quite a while since a new, constant plate flaw has been reported on the 5¢ Blue. Much of the line is quite faint, but the portion in the ‘T’ of Postage should be quite visible.

As a result of some very helpful encouragement, I have been attempting to improve the home page of the site to be more helpful, especially to new visitors. I suspect that regular site users will head directly to the search page, but hopefully the landing page modifications will help foster interest in Admiral CPVs.

There is a new page where some of the finer details of steel engraving are discussed.

The Report Errors to WGB feature is back and available on each stamp page. This is likely the easiest way to discuss a specific stamp with me.

Finally, after some experimenting with “Twig” (a PHP template engine), there is a new Zone Statistics page. If you have ever wondered how many plate flaws are listed in Zone 16 of the 2¢ Carmine or how many retouches have been reported in Zone 4 of the 5¢ Blue, this page is for you. If nothing else, it will provide quick, current access to site data…possibly for research purposes?

To quote Hannibal Smith, "I love it when a plan comes together.”

I spend quite a bit of time pulling ‘possible’ plate flaws out of bulk lots of Admirals. The plan is that if I look at enough stamps, I should start seeing duplicates; IF the possible flaw is constant.

Recently, this item came across my desk and I determined that it matched a stamp I had set aside a few years ago. As a result, we now have another constant plate variety, which shows as a mark in the upper right of the 1¢ Green.

People who do not know me well, might assume that I purchased this item because it features a 1¢ stamp cancelled on the front of a postcard mailed from Victoria, BC, to Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 5 May 1913, with a 2¢ Carmine Admiral franking on the reverse. They would be mistaken.

The real reason I acquired this piece is that the 1¢ stamp looked unusual. At the time, I did not appreciate just how unusual it was. The pitted markings in “ONE CENT,” in both numeral boxes, and in several other areas of the design seemed familiar, yet no matching 1¢ coil example could be found. A search on this site for any 1¢ Green bearing the “Pitted” tag finally produced a match—on a sheet stamp.

This stamp is now understood to be the coil component of a pair produced from a printing plate used for both sheet and coil stamps. The other half of the pair can be viewed here.

This is the fifth such sheet–coil pair recorded in the Admiral issue. All known examples can be located using the MF (Multiple Format) tag in the site’s search field.