Need Help With Franklin 1 Cent Stamp

Dear members
Hello from Australia.
This is my first post as a new member and I was hoping some one could please help me with a recent find.
I have recently taken up again my love for stamp and coin collecting since I was a child and I have in the last 12 months tried to educate myself in my spare time to be able to enjoy my hobbies and part of that education is gain the forums wide and extensive knowledge.
I am unfortunately no expert but a novice with a passion for Pre decimal Australian stamps which I am very slowly getting to know and appreciate but also I have recently started a small collection of stamps from the USA, which I am finding also fascinating but also a daunting task but a recent find at my sons school fate has made me very excited.
The stall my wife and I where looking at had hundreds of old books on it and one of the books I noticed was a stamp album which caught my eye immediately, on opening I was amazed to see firstly that there where stamps still in it and secondly that they where predominantly from the states, on closer inspection there seemed to be a wide variety but seemed to range from the early 1900's to the sixties, I asked the lady at the stand how much for this book and she said $5 at which I said I will buy it please.
We got home and I left the book on my desk for about a week and one night opened the album and started to browse through, there where a couple of stamps bunched together and I pulled them out and started to sort through them, all of a sudden one caught my eye and then another.
To my amazement one of the stamps was a 1cent Franklin stamp which had two colours the top half was brown and the bottom half was green, wow I thought, straight away I was on the internet trying to find any information regarding it, unfortunately or fortunately I have not been able to find any information about the stamp or any similar fault with other stamps, I found a lot of information about stamps that had colours missing and other printing errors but nothing even close to this, so with all of that I have now come to this point and have joined the stamp community to see if the wide, extensive experience that people have here might be able to tell me about the stamp, and what may have caused such an error and how rare, if at all it may be.
Hope someone can help.

Your example is what is referred to as "color changelings"; in other words, the stamp was exposed to either sunlight or some sort of bleach or chemical that caused the reaction. It is a very common occurrence on early US issues.

The value is zero, however, some collectors desire to retain them as examples of what can occur either through intentional or unintentional means.

What he said....and welcome!

Hi Guys
Thank you very much for the response it is greatly appreciated.

Here's a pretty obvious color changeling that I have in my collection. I think the left stamp was left out in the sun a bit too long.

Thanks Partime, I tried a few filters on it as well unfortunately the photo didn't transfer across very well, I thought it might of been coloured altered as well but it seemed odd that there was no effect on the white .

Here is a few I had lying about.

On the last post, I don't think the first two are examples of color changelings. If I recall, the 8 cent grant comes in several shades. The 6 cent Garfield is an orange stamp that is heavily oxidized. The last image speaks for itself.

Hi rohumpy
Thank you for your reply, the last stamp is the closest to what I have with two very strong colours, unfortunately my 100Kb picture does diffuse the colours a bit.

Hi plethera, and welcome!

I have seen color changes happen to stamps such as yours when they have been stored in a stock book for a long period of time. The portion of the stamp that sticks out of the pocket is a little more exposed to the environment than the part that's covered by the pocket. Heat, light and humidity are often the causes of such degradation.

Nevertheless, it sounds as if you are having a good time getting back into stamps! What fun to find an old album for $5!

Karen

Hi kehess
Thank you very much for the kind welcome and also the information about my stamp, it now seems very obvious that where the stamp possibly protruded out of the plastic sleeve in the album, might have been effected in some way by natural elements.

Regards Michael

Try turning the stamps sideways in the stockbook. It takes up more space, but theres nothing left exposed to the elements.

HI bstrent
Thank you for the advise, much appreciated.