"I am directed to acknowledge your letter stating that you have in your possession a Canadian reply post card, upon which the stamp appears in the upper left-hand corner, and inquiring whether this stamp was officially issued by the department, or whether the position of the stamps was due to a mistake in cutting the sheets.
"In reply, I am to say that the position of the stamp on the card to which you refer (a certain number of specimens of which were inadvertently issued by this Department) was due to a mistake in printing."
We have never seen one of these cards which could have been produced by wrong cutting.
If any Error cards have been made by such a manipulation, either by accident or design, we do not know it. However, the difference between a wrongly cut card and a genuine error is so apparent that it can be detected even without the use of a millimetre scale.
The distance of the stamp from the end of the scroll on the error card is 4 mm., while if produced by wrong cutting of a sheet of the correct issue (stamp at right), the distance will be 14 mm.
To prove this we take two of the latter cards (in the absence of an uncut sheet which we have never seen), place them end against end, measure the distance from the left end of the scroll on one card to the
outer circle enclosing the figure "1" on the other card, and the result will be as stated above.
This fact and the letter from the Canadian P. O. Department, quoted above, removes all doubts as to the true character of this rarity, known as the "Canada Error Card".
We have several used specimens in our collection.
The Monthly Journal[231] later received a copy of the error card which was postmarked in September, 1884, and which is the earliest date that has been recorded for it.