Help Please....don't Believe This Is A Sc#24 But...

I already know which one you are talking about and is the reason for my snarky comment about my jumbo margin #9 strip. The problem speaks more to the ineptitude of PSE than an issue with their process. Many of the 1851-61 stamps should only be expertized by experienced specialists not generic experts that don't know what they don't know. Below is the only graded stamp that I have. I was happy to pay $45 for the grade 85 stamp. Who can tell me why it is not just a plain old #26?

rgstamp, do you refer to Lot 1684?

Dudley, I concur 100 percent that perhaps "type- unknown" would be acceptable in certain situations.
Without a plating, Sinclair stamp could be a type Ia. But since can't see bottom curved line or ornaments, I think PF got this correct, but they were lucky. If they didn't make attempt to plate they just got lucky!

Dudley/Sinclair...

Yes ... lot 1684. Do you concur with the mistake before I ridicule PSE over this one on this forum, or am I nuts and haven't analyzed properly (I do not have high res scan of it)

Rg

I concur.

I get their catalogue these days so I spotted it in about one millisecond. Could be a mistake in the catalogue but I highly doubt it.

I prefer to wait until I can get image up and start a new thread about it!. Let's be patient

Sinclair - is it a 52L25 with rather faint recuts in the upper left triangle?

Sinclair

I don't know varieties of 3c issue that well, but I see a damaged transfer/fade in upper left rosette?? doubling of outer left frame line, especially bottom half??

am I close?

By the way, has anyone plated the later plates of the 1851-57 3c?

Caper, You are correct 52L25. In my opinion, 52L25 is one of the most interesting positions on any of the 29 3c plates. It is really hard to get those recut lines to show much clearer. If you have the
Chase book you can see it is not just lines that were recut. There was a bunch done in the tessellated area below the UL rosette.

Plate 10 and 11 in all three states have been reconstructed. Plate 15 has been reconstructed as well. Some good progress has been made on both states of Plate 9. The Type III plates are difficult to reconstruct.

Sinclair - are the plates published and available on-line?

Lot 1684 - yea, looks like they missed that one.
The top recut line in the stamp below it, no doubt caused some confusion. When looking for recuts, I often look at an adjacent stamp, for multiples, or large margined singles, like this one. So that's ok, but the error was in not going back to the original.

This also brings up a long-standing issue I've had with the Neinken book. That is that for some stamps that get special drawings, those drawings don't always show things like: guide dots or side ornament shortness, and sometimes other things. On page 137 of Neinken, you can see that pos 4 and 5 don't show guide dots. In fact, a reminder to myself - I need to draw those in my book.

Regarding the PF cert posted - the reasoning in the PFC is what is most commonly used, and accepted in the industry for un-plated or not verifiable positions.

You guys do raise a pertinent point, regarding whether everything has to have a catalog number or not. The same argument can apply to any generic stamp, that posseses some unique identifying characteristic, like a watermark/grill, which may not be definitely visible so one isn't sure what variety the stamp really is. Its a generic problem. So what do you call it?

Personally, for my collecting, I would look for examples that show the type and/or variety well. There is nothing wrong with having copies that don't show the variety, as they are interesting, useful for research, and can provide their owner with some sort of enjoyment, as stamps do for all of us. Clearly, they are of lesser value and importance than the definite ones. One issue is that sellers need a good way of classifying or identifying what they are selling. Defaulting these items to the lowest common denominator, and most common variety seems like a reasonable compromise, given the systems of classification that we have. I agree that it isn't perfect.