What Is This Washington Stamp Worth

1847bill, There were early experiments with gum breakers of different designs mostly during the concept development. The actual production gum breakers were not applied until the last half of 1923. The Scott 554 was flat plate and would not have had a gum breaker.

The gum breaker was actually applied during the perforating process just prior to the cutting.

What was the purpose of the gum breakers? Just to save on gum?

The gum breakers were developed to keep the sheets of stamps flat in the drawers. I've seen experimental gum breakers as early as the Scott 300 or 1902. These were fine line gum breakers. In 1923 they made a big push to developed a gum breaker for long term service. I've read that there were several designs tried and what we know as the type I gum breaker won. This also coincided with the transfer of production from flat plate to rotary press. What Russ said makes sense. The new rotary press machines would print, apply gum with breakers, and perf continuously. When I was a kid my father had a large collection. I remember a tall safe with boxes and sheets of stamps stacked in it along with his coins. I'm sure the safe was to keep me and my seven siblings hands off. He cursed Farley who took over in 1933. Anyway he told me about the use of gom breakers and said the early sheets were impossible to keep without weighting them down.