Gibraltar 7th Issue KE VII 1904-8

Gibraltar 7^th Issue KE VII  1904-8

Soon after the turn of the century the Crown Agents were perturbed at the number of forgeries being introduced to defraud the Treasury and Colonial Governments. To counter this, two steps were introduced.

Firstly the Crown CA watermark was considered insufficient safeguard against forgery, so a multiple watermark was designed which would cover a bigger area of the stamp.

Secondly, cases had occurred of the cancellation on stamps being removed, and the stamps being re-used as mint. To counter this, an experimental chalk surfaced paper was introduced which made the ‘cleaning’ of stamps impossible owing to the fugitive nature of the surface.

Gibraltar was one of the countries selected to try out this experimental paper.

However, these changes were carried out in two stages; the first incorporating the new watermark, but not the experimental paper, and was introduced as follows:-

½d 1st June 1904 1s 13th October 1905

1d 10th October 1904 2s 2nd February 1905

2d 9th January 1905 4s June 1908

6d 19th April 1906 £1 March 1908

The original 8s was not replaced, but remained on issue until November 1910, when it was superseded by that issued for the Colonial standardisation.