Filling Holes In Collection

I just recently added these two stamps to my US collection.
I was really happy about the prices and condition of the stamps.



#69




#71


Now I am looking for a reasonably priced 70 and 77.

Love that 69... gorgeous.

thanks ratio411

The centering on that 71 is one of the nicest I have ever seen. And the 69 is not shabby.
Verry nice.

Very nice! I am just enamored with this issue and the #71. I can stare at them for hours. I too need a decently priced #71.
I tried to post pics of my copy but the image is still much larger than I wanted even though I re-sized them twice on photobucket...yours has better centering than mine too.

Lovely stamps! On that #69 ... did you buy it as a reperf? The right side is almost certainly reperfed and the bottom looks like it may be as well.

I have to agree about the centering of the 71 - its one of the best I've seen. Very nice!

Matt

Rileysan, no I didn't buy the 69 as a reperf.
How can you tell that it is a reperf?

compare the perfs on the 71 to the 69-- see how the 69 looks kinda perfect and uniform--I think thats what he means.

Pobrien36, congratulations on the two stamps. I'd love to have them in my collection.

Rileysan- I was going to say the exact same thing on the bottom of the 69......nice catch on your part. Definitely looks too perfect for that issue, compared to the top. Ray

Here's a couple that will fill a couple of holes-- I don't usually buy space fillers, but bought 35-38 for around $50. And, the #38 has the straight edge on the right, and looks like a pulled perf at the bottom, or is that a repaired corner? So $50, at 1/10th CV for just the 38 is just about right. I already had nice copies of #35 and #36, but haven't ever had a 37 or 38.



Ray

Those are tough to find, Ray ... even space fillers are going for a lot these days. Grats on your acquisition!

It's tough to tell from a photo, thus my observations are not gospel. Be thorough in examining this stamp before assuming I'm correct. I tend to trust my instincts, but that doesn't mean I'm right all the time.

There are a couple of things I look for when looking for a reperf from a photo.


1) Perf spacing. Most attempts at reperfing are pretty poor and the perf spacing is usually way off. The bottom and right-side perfs look a little uneven in the spacing and should be checked with a perf guage.

2) Outside edges of perfs. Unless a stamp is scissor cut, the perfs will almost never be the same length. The top of your #69 is a good example of what I'd expect to see. The perfs are several different lengths due to uneven tearing when pulling the stamps apart.

3) Depth of the perf holes in relation to the design. This is not always possible measure as the perfs are not always square to the design. The best way to check is to put a straight edge on the inside edge of the perf holes to see if they make a straight line.

Finally, you cannot put a perf guage to a picture. But what you can do is look on all 4 sides of a stamp and visually compare in your mind. If you come to a side of a stamp with perfs that look different than the rest, there might be a problem. Since there weren't a lot of perf varieties in 19th century US stamps, it's easy to recognize the real thing.

Thank you for the information Rileysan.

The best to tell if a stamp has been re-perf'ed is to do a flip and rotate test. If you can hold off until tomorrow I can explain how it is done. Or, maybe Art, Otto, Russ or one of the others can fill in for me. Like a famous stamp collector once said "I hate it when work and family get in the way of my collecting" or something close to that.
Ron