In 1873, the contract for the printing of U.S. postage stamps was awarded to the Continental Bank Note Company. At that time, Continental took over some of the dies and plates used by the National Bank Note Company who had held the previous contract. In order to establish whether certain stamps had been printed by National or Continental, "secret" marks were added to many, if not all of the plates used to produce the Continental Bank Note stamps.
It must be noted that a "secret" mark has never been found on either the 24˘ or 90˘ stamp, and only on the American Bank Note Company printing of the 30˘ stamp. In fact, the 24˘ Continental is impossible to distinguish from the 24˘ National, other than a possible few copies printed on ribbed paper, presumed to have been used only by Continental. Only one stamp has ever been certified as the Continental, Scott 164, and it is of course clearly on ribbed paper. On many of the higher denominations the quality of the printing plate is evident; often the National stamps show a finer detail, especially on the earlier printings while the plates were still new. Many of the stamps are distinguishable by the color of ink used, and in fact, the only way the thirty and ninety cent stamps can be distinguished is by color.
The best way to recognize the "secret" marks is to actually see them. Click on a link above to see the secret mark for that denomination.
Quote: A little about the secret marks. The National Bank Note plates were hardened and the secret marks were applied as a minor re-cutting of the plate positions by hand. Continental choose to re-cut the hardened plates rather than annealing and re-hardening. Since this was done by hand, a large amount of variation would be expected. The fact that the plates were hard caused even more variation. The result was that each 200 subject plate yielded 200 different re-cuts (secret marks).
As these plates continued in use they also became worn causing more variation. The secret mark on the 3 cent varied from a slight thinning of the inside of the longer ribbon end to an addition of color to the near total obliteration of the lines. The one characteristic of the National (136 & 147) was the smooth arc on the inside of the ribbon especially toward the point that is rarely present in the re-cuts.
Thanks for the replies, and the links which were especially interesting.
As I get more and more into the early US stamps and all the varieties of color, marks, grills, paper, I would imagine that the "users" of the time figured they were all the same.
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Posted 03/07/2013 08:48 am
