I have a few things to tell about the 1876 issue of The Netherlands and thought, let me share this with you here on Stampboards.
My interest for this issue started about 20 years ago when I bought on ebay an album of 40 pages literally full of the 10 cent carmine stamps. I do not know exactly any more but if I remember correctly I paid 500 Dutch guilders for the album. This is about EUR 225, USD 260, AUD 365. To get an impression, this is one of the pages from the album:
I got curious about the little drawings (like in the lower left corner) and numbering on each page (like the '1' in the lower right corner). I suspected it had something to do with a plate reconstruction and that the number indicated a position in the plate. I was aware of the possibility to plate the first and second issue but not this issue. Anyway, I thought it would be interesting enough to sort the stamps on types, perfs, plate flaws, cancels, especially the dot cancels, and I was the highest bidder.
When I received the album after some days I opened it and immediately spotted a photo copy and a cutout at the first page which were not shown in the ebay auction. This is the photo copy:
This is the cutout:
When I read the word 'PLAATRECONSTRUCTIES' which means 'plate reconstructions', I was now almost sure that someone had been working on identifying the stamps for a plate reconstruction. The look and feel of the text, images and paper size of the photo copy gave me the idea that it came from the magazine 'Nederlandsch Maandblad for Philatelie' [Dutch Monthly Magazine for Philately]. The text also mentions 'Wordt vervolgd' which means 'to be continued', so it was for sure that more information is available.
But, maybe recognizable, you have little time to sort things out, other things to do, other collecting interests, busy with family, busy with work, you loose interest and the album ended up on the bookshelf. But now I have some more free time, so I took off the dust from the album and got interested again to find out more about plate reconstructions and the issue in general.
One of my hobbies is designing album pages for specialized stamp collections. I am also designing the album pages for a specialized collection of this issue and wlll display these here. If someone would be interested in these album pages, I can share them with you.
Wordt vervolgd (you now know what that means)