Washington&lincoln

I think I have something here but I need help.This was my wife's grandfathers collection that we just found. I took it to a stamp appraiser and he was very happy at the 5c GW stamps but he was going to charge me a lot of money to authenticate them. Is it worth the time and money?

I don't know how to make it larger if someone can help I am a serious newb!!

First welcome to SCF. The 5 cent Washington strip of 3 appears to be a perf 8.5 Scott 396 (issued March 1913). Multiple strips are uncommon but not rare. The Scott 396 is the only perf 8.5 5 cent washington issued and typically is not a canidate for expertization. The catalog value is about $225.00 for very fine centering your example is average centering. If there are no other faults (creases, thins, tears, separated perf, etc) the fair market value would be $50-$100 with the high end being unlikely.
I would not pay for expertization of stamps in that value range.

Boomboom, is it possible for you to scan one or a block individually? Each Stamp or Blk should be your total image size, approx'.

A WHITE sheet of paper with a hole cut out stamp size that can/must TOTALLY COVER the rest when scanning might help if you don't want to remove the stamps for individual scanning. Once scanned CROP then MAGNIFY the stamp.

Boom Boom,

To Russ and all, I just magnified the image and counted 12 perf holes-- I think it has to be a perf 10, therefore #447, and Scott has the used stamp italicized and $375 for a used pair. I just counted the perf holes on my 396, and counted "10", and counted "12" on my 447.

If it's a 447, it might just be worth the expertizing-- but it doesn't have to cost any more than $20 by sending it to Bill Weiss. He can't offer the $5.00 ID service for coils--

Good Luck-- and Russ, please let me know here if I'm wrong--

Thanks, Ray

Here is a pair #447 Flat Press. perf 5¢ Washington flat plate coil perf 10 vert. Single Line Watermark. <- is that right? I thought you could use this scan for comparison.

Has anyone noticed those precancels or are they box cancels? Maybe both?

I just noticed those #304's and I like them a lot. I'm currently working on that set too!


I think you have found a nice start to a good collection right there!

ILS-- did you ever measure the size of the pair from top to bottom? With such a small margin at the top, I'd be curious. If you measured, was it 25mm? If not, you might want to look at that top margin with a 30x magnification to see if you can see some perfs that may have been trimmed. 441-447 are notoriously faked.....hope I'm wrong. Thanks, Ray

They are not mine ray.mac. I should have written that in that post. Thank you for the heads up though as most of everything I post is mine however. I just thought a closeup of the stamp(s) in question would be helpful. I think I got the image off of ebay so it probably is fake. lol

Ok now I am freaking out. We just found a whole book of stamps. They look very old. I found three of those franklin one dollar stamps all perfed together and look to be cancelled. This is way to much for me to handle guys. I am going to have to learn how to scan these things and post them because I have no idea what I have. Could be nothing but it has 22 pages of very old stamps. And to the gentlemen that explained how to scan them right thank you but it was in a different language as I am not computer savy lol. I am going to do my best.

The precancels shown are common, and I suspect the 5cent coiled stamps are probably Scott 496's.
In all, about 5 dollars 'worth' of stamps on that sheet. I hope the expert does not charge more that 2% [10 cents] to authenticate them.
Please scan and show more sheets - you never know when the good stuff will show up.

Nice stamps! Nice find! Welcome!

In photo editing software or programs cropping a photo to see a stamp to the best advantage is sometimes a hard concept to understand if you haven't done it before. Simple idea but hard to explain and understand properly. A picture is worth a thousand words they say:

Ignore the 4x6 and such like sizing, your program will probably just have a frame around the whole image and you will grab it and move it around and Save As when you get the size and composition correct.

Pretend the antelope is one stamp you want to zoom in on.

So then, when you save the cropped or modified picture you will get a single stamp like


And a really zoomed-in image (at a higher resolution like 600 pixels per inch, your scanner software should have this somewhere or the other, a usual regular scanner setting is 200 ppi) will give you something like


See how the details pop out at you, much easier to see damage or repaired places or such or just to see the beauty of the stamp in finer detail. Look at the Engraved thread on here to see some really well scanned images.

Remember to leave room around the edges to show all the perforations around the edges also.

You don't have to do the expanded image size and resolution unless you are really examining the details of a stamp.

If your file size for the image (right click / choose properties) is too big for the forum then use the image optimizer tool above the editing message window.

Sorry if you know this already, wasn't sure.

Hi sometimes it's the low value stamps that are the most valuable
But the 4 that catch my eye in those scans are the $2 blue perf 10 Is a 479 it's just a shame it's in 2 pieces, $5 carmine black perf 11 is a 547, but here is where it gets harder because this is going on the colour of the stamps which can be distorted by the scanner the strip of 3x $1 look brown against violet brown to me but this is for you to check perf 11 518b or if it's violet brown 518, but the one that has me is the 5c Garfield which going on the colour which looks to be Gray brown not yellow brown, but before I go any further it is very difficult to colour guess from a scan because it changes the colour to the closet colour if it doesnt recognise it, but I looks like a 205c but it is most Likly a 205 yellow brown, I don't know if there is paper difference between the 2 but the 205c is on soft porous paper, but the other thing that says it's not a 205c is that it is used and being as they were special print all known copys are unused

Besides the Lincoln's - these two are my favorite's so far.. If that $2. Madison was in better shape that would a nice snag!