Farley Question

So I have been reading up on Farley's Follies. First let me say that my family and friends think I have gone off my rocker. Not only have I suddenly found stamp collecting fun, but I am actually starting to read up about various stamps. Lordy. Anyway, on to my question. What is the difference between a Farley Special Printing or an ordinary printing of the souvenir sheet? I was looking on a couple of websites and one said that a 750 souvenir sheet was not one of the reprints? But it isn't gummed and it is imperforate.

Checkout this link for a further explanation:

http://www.1847usa.com/Farleys/Farl...MtRanier.htm

I am not sure if I understand the explanation of the difference between the original souvenir sheet (SC 750) and the Farley reprint (SC 770) Is the only difference the width of the gutter? I know that the Farley was issued without gum, but this can't be diagnostic, since the original could have the gum removed.

As a matter of fact, that is the website I remembered saying that 750 isn't a reprint. So both the reprint and the original printing put out an ungummed, imperforate souvenir sheet? Based on the fact that I have some Farleys that are gummed and some not, I don't think that my father-in-law or his father removed the gum. Plus I was reading that the most collectable had the various gutter configurations and yet mine aren't that way. I remember seeing a letter that my father-in-law's dad sent him saying he was going out to buy some of the Farleys at the post office so I am surprised that he came back with four in a corner of the 3 cent century of progress (731a) but also a 750 and 751 souvenir sheets and the 735 as well as others. All ungummed, imperforate. Yet he has others that are in groups of sixteen (737 mother's day) which is 4 stamps across and 4 rows down. Or I have a strip of 728 of 8 across and 2 rows, both of these are gummed and perforated. As well as groups of 4, none of which are in the coveted gutter configurations. I guess I just wonder why if the gutter configurations were more desired didn't he collect them that way, would it have been known at the time that people wanted the stamps in that arrangement; and which stamps that are imperforated are Farleys Follies and which aren't.

The secret is that the originals were only issued as souvenir sheets of 6.
The reprints were sold as full sheets of 20 souvenir sheets of 6.
So, any single souvenir sheet of 6 has to be significantly larger than the original issue to identify the reprint souvenir sheets.
Cutting a single souvenir sheet from the full sheet in the same exact size as the original would make it indistinguishable from the original.
The gutter pairs, etc. can only come from the full sheets of the reprints because the originals were not issued in full sheets of 20 souvenir sheets of 6.

This is were the difference in definition in 'pane' and 'sheet' trips up most of us.

If you want to read how the original Farleys were first offered to the public, check out the center column of this Postal Bulletin (from 1935):

http://www.uspostalbulletins.com/PD...df#search=""

Thanks for the info. Boy, the post office has always made things complicated....