Page 122 - Sierra Leone to 1961 - The Collection

The Edward VII Keyplate 1902 to 1912

1907 Unified Colour Trials

The Crown Agents had become aware of stamps of one country being fraudulently manipulated to be used
as a higher value stamp of a different country. To counter this, a Universal Colour Scheme was proposed via
a set of imperforate Edward VII IMPERIUM stamps, all with a printed value of 6d. This scheme allocated a
fixed colour for each value irrespective of country.

Proposed red colour for 1d Proposed orange colour for 1½d

Coloured 6d on white background White 6d on coloured shaded background

1907-12 Colour Trials. Multiple Crown CA Watermark. Perf 14.

The Type D9 overprint is extremely rare on Edward VII issues. According to Samuel, it was probably used
to invalidate stamps produced during ink and paper trials. The manuscript date of ‘Feb. 07’ is earlier than
the first printings of the 1d and 2½d values. The SPECIMEN Type D9 examples shown are the only values
known with this style of overprint on this issue.

SF ink = Single Fugitive ink