Bank Notes - Need Some Hard Or Soft Paper Help

Over the last week or so I've re-identified all of my bank notes using the 1847usa website. What I did was scan a group of them at 1200dpi which made it very easy to distinguish secret marks and the re-engraved stamps.

Only problem I'm having now is the soft and hard paper types. I tried their methods with the flicking near the ear and looking for opaqueness. Sometimes I think I have one figured out and then start doubting it. Also read about using a UV light but I don't have one.

I'm wondering if there's a way to use a scanner to scan the back and mess with the settings to maybe figure them out a bit easier.

These are gonna drive me crazy

Thanks for any other tips.

Cheap and easy way to get familar with the main differences is to set up a reference. Use a copy of the 1869 series Scott 114 for the hard papr and a copy of the re-engraved Scott 207 for the soft paper. Both of these stamps are readily available and very inexpensively. Nothing beats the hands on experience for distinguishing these papers.

Thanks Russ. I picked out a couple of nice copies of those this morning and started trying to get a feel for them.

But I'm still looking to remove the human factor from this by doing something with a scanner so I started experimenting a little while ago.

Here's what I've come up with so far. Not sure if I may be on to something or not so I'd like some opinions.

I took the 2 known hard(114) and soft(207) and scanned the backs normally



I noticed you could see through the 207 a little better than the 114

Next, I put a piece of white notepaper over them and put a flashlight on top of the notepaper:



Clearly - no pun intended, you can see right through the 207 and you can barely tell that the other is a 114

So I took out the 2 stamps I had marked as either 156 or 182 and they both looked like this:



The other one actually had 182 written on it in pencil from someone's past identification.

Then I scanned 2 stamps I had marked as either 159 or 186 and they both looked like this:



I still have many more to check but would anyone else agree that this might be pretty accurate?

Here are 3 1 ct franklins

If this scanning method is valid then they are 156, 156 and 182

I'm now leaning that this is not correct.

I scanned about 10 of the 2 cent vermillion stamps that could have been either 178 or 183 and they all looked the same with no image showing through

maybe the differences I was seeing was only because of different color stamps

bummer