Nearly fifteen months elapsed before any other King Edward stamps were issued when, on September 27th, 1904, the 20c denomination made its appearance. This is of similar design to the others, was printed from the usual sized plate of 100, and bore imprint and plate number in the top margin as before. Only one plate has been recorded and as the use of this denomination did not average over 400,000 a year, it is quite probable that only this one plate was made. This value was issued in the olive-green shade adopted for its predecessor.
More than four years elapsed before the next and last value of the King Edward series appeared. This was the 50c denomination, which was placed on sale on November 19th, 1908, after the supply of the old blue stamps first issued in 1893 was finally used up. In design, sheet arrangement, etc., it conforms with the others of the series. One plate—numbered 1—was used.
The 2c value of this series is known entirely imperforate and the history of the variety, which is now quite common, is of considerable interest. The imperforate stamps were first mentioned in the Weekly for October 10th, 1908, in the following editorial:—
We are enabled to report the existence of the two-cent Canada, current issue, imperforate, a reader having shown us a sheet of one hundred of these varieties bearing the plate number 18. This is a discovery of momentous interest which must attract much attention not alone from specialists but from collectors, as we may say for the sake of distinction, as well. The fact that the pane bears so early a plate number removes it from any inclusion in the theory that the Canadian authorities propose to issue stamps in imperforate sheets in the manner that has been employed by the United States. Without doubt, the sheet under notice was regularly prepared for issue in the accepted way, and it is the belief from information at hand that a sheet of four hundred of the stamps was printed and reached the public.
This announcement excited much interest among collectors of Canadian stamps and enquiry regarding the seeming irregularity was made of the postal authorities at Ottawa. The Post Office Department were convinced that no irregularity could have occurred, but finally made an enquiry, and were, of course, compelled to believe the evidence of the existence of imperforate specimens. In the issue of the Weekly for February 20th, 1909, a more complete story of the find is related, viz.:—
The sheet as found was not of 400 stamps, but of over 200 stamps, as the right-hand half of the sheet on which our report was based and which was not before us when we wrote, contained a pane of 100 stamps, plate number 14 and an irregularly torn part of plate number 13, showing about fifteen whole stamps and parts of others. Assuming that the lower pane in the left half was torn approximately in the manner of the right lower pane, or plate number 13, the find consisted originally of 230 stamps, more or less. This reckoning agrees, we believe, with the recollection of the person who rescued the imperforates from oblivion, in a philatelic sense. The plate numbers on the sheet that gave authority for the chronicling of the stamps by the Weekly are 13 and 14, and not 18, as first printed.
A. N. Lemieux of Chicago is the man who found the stamps. While in Ottawa five years ago or so (this was later corrected to June, 1906), when he was in business in that city, he saw the stamps just within the iron fence that has been described as surrounding the establishment of the bank note company that prints the Canadian stamps. The day was a rainy one and the sheet had evidently been blown out of the window. Mr. Lemieux apparently attached no value to the sheet of over 200 stamps, which was in a wet, crumpled condition, and without gum. Mr. Lemieux was under the impression, no doubt, that gum had been on the sheet but had been washed off by the rain.
Mr. Severn ultimately acquired what was left of this imperforate sheet, and later submitted the stamps to the officials at Ottawa, who pronounced them but “printer's waste”. Mr. Severn, in adding to the history of these imperforates, says:—
They seemingly had been trampled upon and subjected to the usage that would be given such castoff material. Further, it was said that they had been blown or thrown out of a window, no doubt. It was suggested that the stamps be returned to Ottawa and that there were moral grounds for such a course on the part of the holders. The description of “printer's waste” seems to be correct and the inference is that the stamps never had been gummed. They belong to that class of curiosities that appeal strongly to the specialist, but which the ordinary collector regards as something apart from his collecting policy.
The stamps did not go back to Ottawa, and the postal authorities there annoyed, doubtless righteously, that such things should escape from their well regulated printing establishment went to considerable trouble to make the imperforates of small monetary value. The following paragraph, written by a correspondent of the Weekly, was the first inkling collectors had that the department had thought any more of the matter:—