Repaired J4

Here's a Postage Due that appears to have a crude repair. I find that the front looks perfectly acceptable, so the repair was either very successful, or not at all necessary. My question, though, is to determine what type of paper they used to reinforce the back. The repair paper is also perf 12 but is a much narrower piece. Is this selvage from a different stamp?





Also, the perfs are the right side are very much different from the rest. Was this a straight edge that was amateurishly repaired?

Are you sure it's a repair? I believe collectors use to use pieces of stamp selvedge as crude hinges.

That makes a lot of sense, because, again, I could not see any reason for the repair.

I don't see anything that looks like a repair. I also think the perfs are genuine, just rough because of the soft paper.
The biggest problem with these is deciding on the shade between brown, red brown, and claret. The clarets are easy; besides the normally deeper shade they floresce yellow under UV, but the other two are very hard to tell apart unless you have a large group of them to sort through.

Partime, I believe Spain was right. I don't see any problems on the front of the stamp. Soakink the piece would give you the answer!

Pete

Of course there could be a thin under that selvedge; there is no way to know that without removing it.

Me, I hate hinge remnants so I would soak it off.
But that's risky.

Art

Is the paper soft or hard? For the next question are both the 1879's and 1879 Special Printings printed on soft paper since both are American Bank Note Company? Why doesn't Scott have a price for used ones and only unused?

I got lazy and never soaked the stamp. Maybe leave it for another day. Put side-by-side with other red-browns, however, now makes me wonder whether this is J18, not J4.