US 20-Cent Ringed Neck Pheasant Booklet Varieties

These modern stamps should be relatively simple to identify, but for some reason I'm struggling with them. I assumed (by the 1998 date) they would be Scott #3051, but there are several varieties listed and it seems the perforations are distinctly different on these two examples.

Which one (or ones) do I have?

In the stamp at left, see how the corners are formed by straight die cuts? The left stamp is either US #3050(sdc11.2) or #3050b(sdc11) in the Scott catalog. You will need to measure the serpentine die cut (sdc) to distinguish.

In the stamp at right, the ends of the top and bottom perfs are curved at right and left. Therefore the right stamp is #3051. I know it is not #3051A because the top and bottom perfs are not perfect reflections of each other. In #3051, the top and bottom perfs are actually slightly different die cuts. In #3051A, top and bottom die cuts are exact same gauge.

There are actually 2 different flavors of #3051. Scott mentions them, but with the typical Scott inconsistency, does not assign a different minor catalog number. One type has sdc10.4 at top and sdc10.6 at bottom. The other type is reversed, with sdc 10.6 at top and sdc10.4 at bottom. Yours is the former (sdc10.4 at top, sdc10.6 at bottom). You can easily tell by the difference in the inside corners. For sdc10.4 (at top), the die cut will curve normally at the corner (see top right corner). For sdc10.6 (at bottom), the die cut slopes gradually at the corner (see bottom right corner).

Thanks for the assist. Yet another of these "modern" issues that have a bunch of subtle varieties to figure out.

If you haven't realized it already, I've put these similar (yet different stamps) in one place in the hopes of sorting out the details later on. Now that I decided to tackle that project, it seems that it is much more involved than I realized.

I guess that eventually we'll encounter the same thing with any number of new US definitive issues, given the different printers and dates and perforations used on booklet/coil/sheet varieties of stamps that make it a real challenge to identify.

That's just one of the many reasons why I stopped collecting new issues with the 2000 New year's Baby stamp, that was issued in 1999.

Art

But the stamps I scanned above were issued in 1998!