Tricks For Identifying Grills On Early Us?

One "trick" to bring up the contrast is to rub a graphite pencil back and forth across a scrap of paper, rub your finger over the markings, and then transfer the graphite to the grilled area of the stamp by lightly rubbing your finger over it.



Sometimes placing the stamp in watermark fluid will help bring out the grill.



Manipulating an image of the stamp by increasing the contrast in photo editing software may also help with identification.



In regard to your question about how rarities get found, here is one story: https://goscf.com/t/14821#14821

Steve

I do not subscribe to the theory that everything has been found. Frankly, I know all sorts of collectors that rarely check anything.

If nobody ever checked, then we wouldn't know about inverted watermarks on otherwise common Ceylon stamps of the KGVI era (for example). Looking through an envelope of a couple hundred Ceylon definitives for an inverted watermark is not everyone's idea of fun, but I'm glad some are doing it.

Pretty well any grill excites me although most that I have are F's . Anything I've learned about grills has all come from here so a quick search will bring up many threads including a couple about absence of. Of course the easiest way is counting points but I believe more attention on measurements is a better ID. Each different grill has a basic foot print so you may not be able to actually count points but a precise measurement if you can tell where the edge of each side is will ID for you. Good luck and please post pics as you go.

I hate to admit it, but I'm one of those collectors. I have many US Stamps with Grills and have looked at maybe 2 or 3 of them. I just assume I have the most common type. Watermarks ? rarely ever look at Watermarks.