Identifying the Bahamas KEVII issues is primarily a matter of determining the difference between the two watermarks, and finding the various color shades. This set was in use from 1902 until it was replaced with the KGV Set in 1912. The quantity printed is very low for some of the values (under 10,000 for the 6d MCA and Pound Values), so this is a fairly scarce set.

The two watermarks used were the Crown CA and Multiple Crown CA (MCA) as shown below. If you can see the watermark, look for the relative positioning of characters to identify the watermark. Crown CA tends to be centered on the stamp, while the Multiple Crown CA Watermark tends to be all over the stamp with several crowns and CA visible in all areas of the stamp. If you have trouble identifying the watermarks, remember that the majority of the stamps were only printed on Crown CA watermarked paper, so you don't have to look at the watermark for every value. Most of the colors are fairly easily seen against black paper with a strong light.

The catalog numbers are from the 1980 Commonwealth Five Reigns Catalogue (CW), 2011 Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue (SG) and the 2011 Scott catalog (ST). The description is from the Commonwealth Catalogue. Please contact Bridger & Kay to obtain a copy of this publication. For the purpose of this article, the issues are being combined by value rather than by watermark. So the catalog numbers will not be in sequence.

The images were saved in a larger size and at a higher resolution so you can more easily see the details used in sorting them. Please be patient if it takes a few minutes for this page to load. You should also note that colors shown on the internet are not exact, so use the colors shown in reference to each other rather than as an exact match.

This article was written to help you identify your stamps.
Please feel free to ask a question, or include a correction.
We are always interested in additional shades or more information on these stamps.
Please feel free to let us know if you have anything helpful.