Cut Square Design U92 Identification Help Please.

I believe this to be U499 11/2c on 1c green, manila, D1. The colour matches the amber manila colour chart perfectly although the pictures are picking up an orange tint from the lighting. The paper is not laid but displays a nice $-like watermark. Opinions please.

The fact that your cut square has the watermark makes this much more interesting than otherwise.

UPSS Die 127 (Scott die 1), with type 8 surcharge.

I'm going to guess you don't have manila paper there, but one of those dingy white varieties of early 20th century. The catalog only lists a watermark 21 for the manila paper envelope. Your water mark looks to be a 19 or 22. Now, you could argue that you have a "new find", which would be very exciting. You need to get it expertised if you really think it is manila. Then you could send it in to the catalog editor.

I'm sticking with the dingy white call right now.

Edited to include Wmk 19

Thanks so much for your expertise ThomasGalloway. I am waiting for a sunny day so I can get some better pictures of the cut square's colouring to show you. It has been cloudy and snowing for the last couple of days up here in Canada and I really need some direct sunlight to get decent pics. It would be a great feeling to discover an unknown and I am excited now.

Got some sun today and some better pics to show the actual colour of this cut square. It is hard to get the exact colour of the square but the following pic is as close as I can get. The lighting used in pictures of this paper make a big difference in the colour. Do you think this is the manila paper?

"Do you think this is the manila paper?"

No. Based on the current catalogs, it is white (or possibly amber, if the scanner is not very true).

According to the catalogs, there were no wrappers surcharged in 1925.

There was no amber-manila paper used for the circular die series.

The only watermarked manila envelopes that were known surcharged in 1925 were watermark 23.

Not that it will help much, due to differing scanners, but here are some different papers for this issue:

Thomasgalloway I really appreciate your help on this. I have adjusted the colour on my picture to show it as best as possible. If the watermark is #19 as you mentioned earlier and the paper colour is as illustrated in the following picture, should I get this expertized. If so where would I send it?

For this item, I recommend APEX, the expertizing service of the APS. I have only had good results with them for U.S. stationery.

http://stamps.org/Stamp-Authentication

Since you are trying to find out if this is a cut square that is currently not included in the catalogs, you want to carefully construct your question to the "experts". Specifically, you don't want to put any thoughts into their heads that might send them off on a tangent unrelated to your question (I speak from painful experience).

Manila is not a color, but rather a quality of paper. The experts will be using a high powered microscope (to look at the fiber sizes in the paper) and other such tools that we don't have access to in our daily collecting lives.

You want to find out if the paper is manila. If you are lucky and they do find it is manila, then the lightbulb will go on when they write up the final opinion and they'll have to say something like "previously unlisted in the xyz catalog". Pick one of the two watermarks (19 or 22) and include it in your question for expertizing. That way they will pay attention to it and include some statement about it in their decision.

P.S. Don't feel bad when they tell you it's white. :-)