The “Zone” number shows where on the stamp a variety appears. If a variety overlaps two or more areas, the numbers for those areas are added together to create its Zone. Click any Zone number below to see how the system works. For a variety to be part of a Zone, it must fall entirely within that coloured area.

If your stamp is already listed on the site, finding it should be quick and easy. Just follow these four steps:

  1. Click the Search link at the top of any page.

  2. Use the options in the left sidebar to specify your search paramaters.

  3. Try Denomination, CPV Type, Format, and Zone to start—these are often enough—but feel free to add more filters for more specific results.

  4. When you’re ready, click Submit Search near the bottom of the left sidebar.

You will see a list of all plated Admirals that match your criteria. Only 15 results show at a time, but you can access additional pages using the navigation bar at the bottom of the page. To view a stamp in detail, just click on it. Clicking outside the stamp’s lightbox will bring you back to your search results.

Randal Van Someren created thse composite views of the zone system diagrams.
He suggests that another perspective might help others who find this concept a bit troublesome.

Some comments on Admiral Plate Flaws

Other than a brief 1987 publication by Hans Reiche, little information—and even fewer images—have been made available on plate flaws of the Admiral Issue. In his comprehensive 1982 study, Marler provided extensive details on re-entries and retouches but described only a handful of actual flaws.

The Unitrade Catalogue (2025-2026) lists just five Admiral plate flaws: the “shilling mark” on the one-cent green (sheet and coil), the “N” and “V” flaws of the seven-cent brown, a cracked plate variety of the fifty-cent denomination and a transfer in the 'N' of Cents on the two cent green endwise coil.

Note: The 'N' and 'V' flaws occur many times on the plate. They are both quite common when compared to most other plate flaws.
Yet, the Admiral Issue was printed from a large number of plates—over 200 for the one-cent value alone. Close examination quickly reveals that the Admirals abound with printing flaws. The plan is to document many of these constant varieties and to encourage collectors to share and compare their findings.

In 2013 (The Admiral’s Log, Vol. XIII, No. 1, p. 13), a simple method was proposed for describing the precise location of a variety on an Admiral stamp. That Zone system (see above) will serve as the foundation for using this site efficiently.