Admirals (philately)

[3] George V succeeded Edward VII as King of England and the British Dominions on 6 May 1910, however postage stamps bearing his image were not issued until late in 1911.

The ensuing period, lasting until 1928, has become one of the most studied areas of Canadian philately which is somewhat unusual because only one basic stamp design was in use.

This resulted in a scarcity of both engravers and the basic resources and materials needed to design and print postage stamps.

The unusually long issuing period required new dies and several plates to be struck, resulting in a large range of flaws and other varieties for a stamp collector to study.

[4][5] Philatelists have also studied the Admirals in great depth due to the large numbers of varieties of the stamps.

The engraving was mastered by Robert Savage of the American Bank Note Company whose main base of operation was in New York but which also had printing facilities in Ottawa, Canada.

The Act created a 1¢ increase on all postage in the hopes that it would generate $8,000,000 Dollars to help with Canada's war costs.

Like the regular Admiral issues, the war tax stamps were printed by the American Bank Note Company.

However, because all the War Tax stamps did bear the inscription that read Postage they were showing up on mail in Post Offices across Canada.

[11] At this time the Canadian Post Offices still had large quantities of the red King George V 3¢ denomination in their existing inventory.

To make use of this stock, which consisted of some 140,000 sheets of 100 stamps, the issues were overprinted with a designation that read 2 cents.

Three engraved dies for the head were used which can be identified from the shading on the King's ear and the shank of the anchor on his cap badge.

Waterlow and Sons engraved the dies and Bradbury Wilkinson produced the printing plates.

[14] Combined with the Canada and Rhodesia Admirals this makes for both a more comprehensive topical and/or historical study group of stamps.