Questions Concerning Scott 355 Coil Pair

Stumbled across the following Scott 355 coil pair in an auction catalog. What concerns me is that the perfs seem a bit too carefully arranged horizontally. But it does come with a 2017 PSE cert, so perhaps I'm being paranoid. Any thoughts from the WF crowd?

I agree... truthfully this coil looks like a disaster in my mind and I agree with your concerns. Do these coils generally have guide line at top???

Well to answer my own question... there are many certified examples with guideline at top! Perfs still look strange but see what others think

Generally, the perfs look good to me with one exception...the center column of perfs seem misaligned providing jumbo spacing to the stamp at left and minimal spacing to the other. I would expect the center column of perfs to be mostly equidistant between the outer perfs on both stamps.

What I don't like is that all three rows of perfs line up exactly, and that sets off alarm bells.

I agree with your assessment. I also don't like how perfs on left meander outward left and perfs on right wander out to right. Could be result of scan technique?

Possibly.

Alignment situation also discussed here, note the post by Tipzi:
http://goscf.com/t/54592

EDIT: If you put a straightedge along the middle perfs; they don't line up perfectly either. Wandering holes happen to a certain degree; much farther than this and the pins are bunching up the paper, making oval holes or tearing the paper. Look at this PB in this topic:
http://goscf.com/t/54676
A different perforator, but ignoring the horizontal row of "strengthened" perfs, there are blind perfs, oval perf holes in different orientations, and other perf holes of various sizes due to poor punching.

That post is about rotary stamps, this is a flat plate coil. The perfs should not line up three across for the whole vertical length as they do here.

I agree that flat plate coils perfs typically do not line up, but while highly unlikely it is possible. It will be interesting to see what Clark says about this pair.
Don

What is the mechanism that causes them never to align? If the perforator had nothing but permanently fixed columns you could plate stamp positions by the perfs. Is that possible?

Consider the old three-reel slot machine. 3 Jackpot symbols lining up are unlikely, but it does happen. In the case of coils, someone also has selected and saved the best-looking ones, ones without corners that look like short perfs.

Check the stamps against the photo on the certificate to be sure they match. If the catalogue lists the PSE certificate number, go to the PSE website and verify the certificate matches.

My understanding is that the odds of three rows of perfs lining up like this on a flat plate coil are literally millions to one. And when the holes are as round as these are............

I see a lot of problems starting with the fact that it has a PSE cert. I wouldn't buy it with your money.

It looks genuine to me. The scan doesn't have sufficient resolution for a detailed analysis, but generally speaking the perfs look typical of genuine perfs and the coil edges are parallel, at least to the extent you can compare them in the low resolution scan.

BTW, the 3 columns of perfs do NOT line up exactly - if you perform a "Srail test" (which it passes, BTW) you can see the subtle differences column to column.

http://pfsearch.org/pfsearch/pf_grd...mitNext=Next