Stumped by King Edward VII 1/2 Penny variants

[Timrath]

I have 7 of those green 1/2p stamps, accumulated over the years from a bunch of different sources. I have no idea how to tell them apart and tell Colnect what the ones I have are.

Colnect lists 20, TWENTY issues of these. My head is spinning, so I narrow it down, set the catalog filter to "stamp number". OK, only 8 left to choose from. Better, but still too confusing.

I measure the perforations. They're all 13 3/4. Colnect only offers 14 and 15x14. Colnect must be wrong on this one, because in all the other stamps, my measurements corresponded exactly with what Colnect said the perforations would be. What's going on here?

Anyway, I set the perforation filter to 14. That narrows the selection down to 6. They all have the same watermark and dimensions. Paper is either given as "ordinary" or not mentioned. Printing is typography for all. Some are printed by De la Rue, some by Harrison&sons, but that doesn't tell me anything.

So I look at the colours. They are given as:

Dark grey green

Blue green

Yellowish green

Light yellowish green | Pale yellow green

Light bluish green

Bright green

Given that these little buggers are over 120 years old, I figure these colours aren't going to be much of a help.

Cancellations are inconclusive, too. Even if I could read them, a 1904 cancellation wouldn't rule out a 1902 stamp.

Should I give up and just list the darker ones as GB 127 and the lighter ones as GB 143, which are the ones that are the most represented on the Marketplace, assuming that they're the most widespread and it's therefore statistically more likely that mine belong to these variants? Or is there actually a secret to telling them apart?

[DJCMH]

Re perforations, before say the 1970s most catalogues measured perforations to the nearest half, with catalogues differing as to whether perforations that fall between two halves should be rounded up or down. As Gibbons is the catalogue of record for the UK, the two options are 14 and 15x14.5. Gibbons appears to have rounded upward on perfs that fell between so your stamp is most likely a perf 14

(note that catalogues have, for the most part, never revised their perforation measurements from when the items were added as new issues, hence why many stamps "fall between")

For these stamps printed by De La Rue, the key difference is the shade of color. That is what determines the variants.

Only one version was printed by Harrison, and that was not released until May 1911, so cancellations can rule that out.

From there you simply have to decide which shade description best describes the stamp you have in your posession. In the end, the stamps that have the most number of catalogue codes are going to be the most common varieties. Sn 127 represents the darker blue-green shades and 143 represents the more yellow-green end of the shade spectrum, while Gibbons and Michel add in intermediary shade stages between those, hence the4 major varieties for the De La Rue 1/2p we list.