Help Anyone US Scott #546??

This stamp is perf 11 and no watermark. The top right berry appears to have a v and not a single dot. The toga lines and top line of the toga are clear and I think it is rotary press BUT I cannot see double lines on the ends of the scroll. So what do people think. I used Micarelli to try and decipher this, but am still stuck. Help anyone and thanks!

The Scott 546 would be 19.5-20mm wide.

this is a SC499.

Thank you Russ and chasa. Chasa why? What pointed you to a 499? (other than probability)

a. the impression of the printing looks like flat plate, not rotary
b. the bottom right scroll is characteristic of type-1
c. unless the scan is faulty, the width of the stamp looks rotary - although the
difference is slight - if you have looked at thousands of these you can
detect the wdith/aspect-ratio of the head portrait to be different on rotaries
Suggestions for identification:
a. always look at the back - flat plate stamps will almost always have specks of ink on the back
from when the sheets were stacked wet before gumming. specks=flat
offsets and rotary will not have specks.
b. compare the design width to known copies of 499 or 546 - that is more reliable than measuring
with a ruler.

wow that's amazing! It is so very fascinating to see this type of knowledge because you can tell it is a very "old hand" and is of almost second nature where it would take me an army of researchers to accomplish the same! Really neat.

Thank you chasa. Very helpful and complete response. This will make life a little easier with these stamps. Thanks again - Jeff

The toga rope and button in your scan doesn't look like a typical 499. Looks sharper. Go to www.siegelauctions.com and do a power search. Look at sale 847, lots 4133 and 4134 and sale 839, lot 1678. Use the image magnifer and compare the toga rope/button to your stamp. These are not typical 500s. They are weaker 500s, but still 500s. Don't know how good the color of your scan is to true color; usually 500's are rose. Not saying yours is or isn't a 499 or 500--just though that the toga rope/button look closer to 500 than typical 499s and you might want to take a look some samples of some 500s from Seigels Auctions.

Looks like a perforated 10 Washington to me. I can clearly see the vertical white line under the ear as well. Your stamp would need to be perforated 11 to be 499 or 500.

Watermark Scott Number
single-line 425
none 463


Perf 11 below

looking at it one more time, maybe it could be SC500.

Guys, no way in the world is this stamp a 500. The type 1a used a transfer roll of I think, 10 dies, and used a lot more pressure than was used on the 499's. So the image is much deeper, and much more detail than a Type I.

Here are a couple of 500's. The color is completely different than any other W-F 2c red stamp- deep rose, and look how dark the toga rope is compared to the either of the other 2 examples.

The toga rope on Jeff's example looks more to me like a rotary. I mentioned a couple of days ago in another thread that the 545/546's were notoriously wide and way off center. I posted a 546 in the other thread. The stamp doesn't look wide enough to be a 546, at least at first glance.

My guess is 499, strong impression.

Here are my 500's (I found both of them in a large lot of 2c reds):



Hope this helps, Ray