US Special Delivery E5 And E5A (Dots In Frame) Variety

Hi All - just thought that since I usually ask questions, I would add some knowledge.

The US Special Delivery (E5) has two varieties listed in scott. E5 and E5a.

The E5a difference is in 6 additional "dots" that appear in the curved frame above the messengers head. Scott Catalog does not have a picture so until I ended up with one of these stamps, I hadn't seen what this looks like.


The first picture are the 2 side by side. One thing to note is you will need a magnifying glass or a loupe to see the dots as the naked eye cannot tell (or at least my eye can't)





This next image is of the "normal" closeup of this stamp.


As you can see the frame line is basically clear roughly between the "E" in United and the "S" in states.

This image is of the variety. Note the 6 dots that appear above the messenger's head, directly before the start of the 3 curving lines within the frame.




Hope this is helpful to someone as when I was searching the internet, I could not find these closeup images.

Very helpful - thanks!

good to know

A;ways thought it was just a color issue one being darker than the other. Good info

Thanks for that bit of knowledge. I have been trying to figure that one out myself. Now to go to stamps and look

Perhaps someone can clear up something for those of us stuck in the last century (well me anyway). My old 1976 Scott Standard Catalogue shows US Scott#E5a as "imperf (pair)". The 2011 Scott Standard that I got out of the library yesterday shows US Scott#E5a as "dots in curved frame" and no mention is made of the above-mentioned imperf pair. What happened in the meantime?

I have a number of Scott U.S. Specialized catalogs going back to 1986. Here's a history of E5a:
1986: E5a imperf. pair is listed and noted as "not regularly issued." The dots variety is listed, but no cat. number assigned.
1987: E5a imperf. pair is listed, but note is deleted. Dots variety listed, no cat. number.
1989: No change from 1987.
1994: E5a imperf. pair no longer listed. Dots variety listed, no cat. number.
1999, 2000, 2001, 2004: No change from 1994.
2007: Dots variety elevated to minor number status, given Scott no. E5a.

The E5a imperf. pair was dropped between 1989 and 1994.
The E5a dots variety was elevated to minor number between 2004 and 2007.

Robert

Trainwreck(Robert): thanks for all the work you did in providing that timeline. I printed it out and inserted it in the applicable page of my old catalogue.

That's neat! Didn't know about that.

Thanks for the pic Eric. There are lots of situations like this: where Scott catalog lists a variety and a "description" of the variety, but does not supply a picture. I wish there was a way for us to have a folder where people could archive picture/scan examples of these Scott varieties.

Dave N.
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