USA 205

Hi to all

I found these in the accumulation of US stamps that I have not sorted yet.
Both are supposed to be 205, but one has lighter colouring and shading. Are there two different printings of this stamp?

Regards

Horamakhet

amateur here but I look up these questions to see if I learn something. In Scott specialty catalog it has yellow brown, brown, and grey brown.

and scott 205c
http://robertasiegel.net/enc/census.../205cold.htm

Hi LarryBruce,

Thank you for your information.

If you look on the right hand stamp, the shading on the jacket is entirely different, as is the shading in the outer edges.
It is as if the plate has been recut, as some of the lines on the right hand stamp are thicker.
On the left hand stamp on the extreme left at the bottom, the colouring is much darker.
Regards
Horamkhet.

#205 was in use for six years, from 1882 to 1888. Four plates for hand presses and one set of five for steam press printing were used for the life of this stamp. For sure there were MORE than two printings.

As for the variations in color intensity you are observing, bear in mind that prior to the use of a steam press, the final wiping of the plate after inking was done entirely by hand without the use of hard tools. Scooping of ink and other types of unevenness was going to happen, and surely did.

ya I notice different shades in the stamps

odd the catalog has both 205 and 205c 12perf and soft paper

i guess these are what an expert is for.

on yours the coat looks like less ink

i notice on the linked page I left the different ones look like a spot light is shined on his forehead the lighting is changing in many of those pictures.

i do not see any difference in the catalog on paper types it just mentions soft porous.

Hi EssayK and LarryBruce

thank you for the helpful info.
I am not crazy after all, just a bit loony like all stamp collectors. lol
Horamakhet

Whats going on with the right stamp's left margin frame-line about a ¼ of the way down from the top? Missing horizontal lines? Thinned? weird printing, efo?

Looks like a big time scrape...

205c must be *really difficult* to ID...

looks like I have the same thing going on with the light coat on my grey

Hi disi123 and others

I thought that too, about being a scrape etc, but when you look at it under a lens 10x you can see that it is actually paper fibres, and the post mark has not been scraped, but is correct for the size of the postmark as indicated by the shape. I think probably foreign material may have been on the plate when the stamp was printed causing the loss of ink to that section of the stamp. I measured the thickness with an electronic gauge and it is uniform, so the foreign matter may have caused it.
Regards
Horamakhet