They say the last word in philately is never written, and this is demonstrated admirably by news of a new discovery in Barbados stamps.
A dealer in the U.K. has found something that has gone overlooked for over 150 years; a sideways watermark on a Barbados Britannia stamp.
The large star watermark series of 1870 featured five different values; ½d green, 1d blue, 4d dull vermillion, 6d orange vermillion and 1/- black. The catalogue only lists one of these values, the 1d, as known to have a sideways watermark. Given that these were all printed by the same printer and all during the period of one year, I suppose it should not be a big surprise that this error has been found on a second value. The question now is, does the error exist on any of the other values?
I’m certainly going to dig back into my collection to double check the watermarks, as something like this is easy to overlook but easy to spot once you know what to look for.
I’ve kindly been sent the following images by PTS member David Wild who made the discovery in an album of Barbados stamps. If you look carefully you can see the watermark on the back of the stamp. The giveaway is that the largest arm of the star should be pointing up and clearly on this stamp it’s pointing sideways.
Now you know what to look for, will you have the next big find in your collection? Start by checking the May 1872 dates and let’s see if another of these 4d stamps exists.