Are These Examples Of Intermediate Paper?

I have a few hundred stamps from the classic bank note era. Many of them are easy to identify using the usual methods (grill, secret marks, hard vs. soft paper). I can easily tell the difference between typical hard paper and soft porous paper using a back light. (The snap test is less accurate in my opinion).

This #178 (hard paper):




This #186 (soft porous paper):




The classic opaqueness and mottling is easily seen. Now take a look at the next two photos. Are these examples of "intermediate paper" that Lester Brookman discusses in his book ("United States Postage Stamps of the 19th Century," Volume II, p 193)? The yellowness and opaqueness suggest soft porous paper, but the lack of mottling suggests hard paper.

Looks like the last two are different papers. Here is a photo I took a while comparing the papers of the 3c Agriculture, Continental's hard paper, an Intermediate paper and American's soft paper. The intermediate looks like your last 2 pics. Hopefully, this will help.

I love the SON geometric ("Herringbone leaf?") you have on that #183 (not 186). Very, very nice.



For the two unkowns, I lean toward soft paper for the upper example because of the ragged frayed look of the perf teeth especially at the spot where one is missing. As for the other, the surest way to establish an item as intermediate paper is by the date on the cancellation. Yours is a teaser. May we see the full cancel? The paper shows rather prominent horizontal mesh lines, only slight fraying at the teeth. Have you looked at it with UV light? It appears to be thinner than the other example, but that could be a trick of non-uniform lighting. So far this is a candidate. I would need to see more of it.

Thanks. I think you are right, it does look similar to your intermediate paper photo. According to Brookman, most of the intermediate paper was used by ABNCo, so I will still call those #183. (BTW - in my original post, the soft porous paper photo is #183 and not #186. That's just a typo).

Essay, I agree, that leaf cancel is very nice. Here is the full photo of the one in question.

Phooey - no year date. That is more typical in the 1870s than in the 80s, but not definitive. I would still be inclined to call it "Intermediate" paper based on what I have seen so far.

Thanks for the look (you do seem to like SON)

I know, very few cancels of that time had year dates. These are some stamps that were part of my father's collection. He got many of them in the 70's and 80's via auction-by-mail. The auction house usually listed them simply as a bank note stamp (especially for the 3 cent Washington) as they didn't want to bother with ID. They were selling the stamps for the cancel, not the stamp itself.

I'm trying to organize these stamps by assigning a catalog number. I'm a little too anal to just leave the ID up in the air.