US Scott 4672 Bobcat Color Shift Error

I ordered a strip of 25 Bobcat one-cent stamps from USPS which arrived today. The third stamp had plate number P1111 so I cut off the first five stamps (center stamp having the plate number) since I collect PNC5s. I then noticed that the red on all of the stamps on the strip were shifted to the right by a little. Two top back numbers on the strip.

In the following image, the top coil strip is normal. The bottom coil strip is the one with the red color shift. It's a bit hard to see in the image but look at the right edge of the bottom strip. There's a red line which touches the date, whereas in the top strip no colors touch the date. Also, you can see that the red 1 in the plate number bottom strip is thicker than the red 1 in the top strip.



How rare is this?

What you have is often referred to as a "color mis-registration". Is it collectible? Sure! Is it rare or valuable? No.

It might be worth a small premium to collectors of such things, but not much, especially since it is on such a low value stamp. Most collectors would prefer to have a "perfect" looking stamp in their collection for aesthetics; the color mis-registration is probably less desirable on an album page because of the seemingly blurred image.

I'd certainly keep it as a collectible and curiosity, but I doubt you'd get much of a premium for it on the secondary market. If you received one from the USPS that way, chances are the USPS is distributing a number of similar strips with the same color mis-registration on it, which of course, diminishes its value.

Ah, okay, thanks for clearing things up for me! I guess I'll just use the rest of the strip but keep the plate number coil in my collection.