I am very sorry for the fact that I haven't had any new posts in over 3 weeks. I have been incredibly busy trying to keep my business afloat, so that I can continue to conduct philatelic research and publish my findings. A key to that has been getting all of the functionality in my website working and developing a marketing plan to build traffic to my website. All of these things take a tremendous amount of time, and I have been finding for the past few weeks that I simply do not have enough time to do everything that I need to do, and write two blog posts each week. So, regrettably I am goin ..read more

This week's post was quite short, as I was only starting my examination of the different perforations on this stamp. My examination of the previous issue had indicated to me that the classification system used by Gibbons for the perforations is too simple, because it treats several distinct perforation measurements as being the same. What I mean by this is that Gibbons lists 14.5-15 and 13.5-14 as the basic perforation measurements. The problem with this is that in the first Waterlow issue, there are actual measurements of exactly 15, 14.5, and 14, all of which look quite different from o ..read more

I see that I missed posting last week about the Second Waterlow Issue of Niger Coast Protectorate. Facebook issued me a temporary sharing ban last week and because of that I did not share last week's post to this blog. So, this week I will give you the hyperlinks to both this week's and last week's post, as well as my synopsis. Last week I wrote an overview post for the Second Waterlow issue of Niger Coast Protectorate. This issue is the unwatermarked one that was issued with the new designs incorporating the name "Niger Coast Protectorate" and no mention anywhere of "Oil Rivers". I discu ..read more

This week's post is much shorter than usual, as I am finding it necessary to write shorter posts if I want to have any chance of being able to continue to post on a weekly basis.  Today's post finishes off this first Waterlow issue, with a detailed study of the perforations on the 1 shiling black and then a quick look at some of the postal history that can be found from this issue.  In terms of perforations, my detailed study turned up some 36 different measurements. Most of these were very close together, but it was common to have different measurements on three or sometimes 4 ..read more

Today, I explore most aspects of the last value in the first Waterlow series, being the 1/- black, which in many respects is my favourite from the set. At least is a close toss up between this and the 2d green. The aspects that I cover today are the paper varieties, which are more or less the same as for the other values, the cancellations, which do not show up as easily on these black stamps, and the plate varieties. The plate varieties are interesting. There are three varieties that can be found on every single stamp in the sheet, two that can be found on about half of the stamps, and ..read more

This week's post completes my examination of the 5d mauve value of this set, which I started last week. This week's post will look at the plate flaws and re-entries found on this value, and the perforations. In terms of plate flaws, my detailed post gives details of six listed plate flaws and re-entries that occur on this stamp, that were listed in the West Africa Study Circle bulletin from May 1976. Two of these occur on many stamps on the sheet, and one occurs on every stamp. I give illustrations of all but three of the six listed flaws. In addition, I have found two varieties that were ..read more

My apologies for the lateness of today's post. I have been very tied up with the website and it took me a few days to catch up after a well deserved, and much needed 2 weeks off. This week I finished off my coverage of the 2.5d lake Queen Victoria stamp from the 1894 First Waterlow unwatermarked issue from Niger Coast Protectorate. I had covered all aspects of this stamp, except for the perforations. So, this week I took all 86 mint and used examples of this stamp in my inventory and measured the perforations very carefully with my Instanta gauge. As I had expected, based on the large num ..read more

I must apologize again to my readers for another break in the continuity of my posts. I had intended to resume posting last week, and to complete thiss week's post today before I go on vacation tomorrow for two weeks. However, the final content edits that I had to make to the my new website took more time than I expected, so unfortunately I did not get a chance to prepare either last week's or this week's post. However, the new Brixton-Chrome website is now completely functional. The only thing I have left to do is migrate these blogs to it, install the language translation app and connect al ..read more

I wanted to let my readers know that I am almost finished my new website, and need another week to complete the finishing touches. So, I will not be posting this week either. However, I will pick up where I left off next Tuesday, with the perforation varieties of the 2.5d lake 1894 Waterlow Issue. Thanks very much for your patience. In the meantime, I would encourage you all to check out how the site looks so far: www.brixtonchrome.com I have added a lot of information resource pages aimed at collectors of all levels of experience. The "Getting Started With Stamps" section covers a lot of t ..read more

Hello everyone. I wanted to apologize for the fact that I will be unable to write any new posts for the next 2-3 weeks. I feel that I owe all my regular and loyal readers an explanation for why I am having to delay my posts, so here goes. When I started out as a stamp dealer and blogger, my intention was to focus all my attention and energy on building the best stamp stock that I could, writing top quality content and getting into a position to be able to service collectors from all over the world. This is no easy task, as I have written about many times in the past. So, when it came to dec ..read more