US #11A 3-Cent 1851 Plating Challenge

Hi All,

I've been trying to plate this #11A but after several runs through the Chase prints and the stampsmarter.com plating images I haven't found a match. It has a short line recut in the upper left triangle, and it appears to have a bottom guide dot on the corner of the label block, but I'm not sure if it is a guide dot. I would appreciate anyone's help with this.

Hey CC nice to see you here.

As you know, I have less resources (no Chase prints) than you. Not much help.

Hi CC,

Thank you for your early and gracious welcome to me.

You did help me turn on the lights!

I wish I could help with plating your stamp.

It's nice to see both of you here.

Been working through a couple hundred, mostly lower grade, 3-cent imperforates I bought in January. I've been plating a lot of them, and uploading some of them to the Stamp Smarter plating project. Just discovered a 19L2L tonight with a beautiful shift that brought the tessellated work all the way outside the right outer frame line that I uploaded as the third image.

I've also been working on a lower guide dot image project to quickly scan through images of all 36 lower guide dot positions on a pane to match it up with a stamp. Once I got these images saved in a folder, I found it saved loads of time compared to using the Chase prints. Ultimately, I'd like to stitch together a collage containing the lower right corner of all 36 positions of a pane in one image.

The clarity of impression and August date make the OB plates a possibilty even if the color doesn't scream OB. Figure the guide dot might be stray ink (although it looks like a dot to me too). The top frame line is distinctive as is the RFL (as your compressed image demonstrates). Maybe sleep on it and try again.

I wonder if I might have something to offer in trade, for a copy of that?

ttreen, Thanks for the good suggestion. I'll take a shot at the OB plates.

stampcrow, I'll let you know if/when I make my first collage image.