Bewildered... 444? 453 ? 454 ? Or.... *491* ???

Perf 12 hand assembled coils were made from sheets perforated in one direction before being cut into strips of 20. The strips were pasted up into coils. Perf 8 1/2 and perf 10 flat plate coils were made with the coiling equipment designed for use with the Stickney rotary press, still in the final stages of development. Flat plate sheets were perforated in one direction, cut in half and pasted up in half sheet strips making a roll similar to the intended rotary press production. The Stickney coiler pulled the roll into the coiling machine which slit the half sheet roll into ten coils which were wound into coils. The later flat plate coils were called Auto Wound Coils. The coil edges were similar to later rotary press coils. Earlier perf 12 coils have a different set of edge characteristics because the half sheets were pushed through a perforating machine with cutting wheels replacing the perforating pins. Some single line watermark perf 12 coils were produced with the Stickney coiling machine, but the tension required to pull perf 12 half sheets and coils through the coiling machine must have resulted in a lot of broken coil rolls. A quick changeover to perf 8 1/2 solved the problem. When sheet stamps were switched from perf 12 to perf 10, coils were also switched. Not long after the switch to flat plate perf 10, rotary coil production started.

Clark

Thanks, cfr, very interesting. I had no idea any of the flat plate coils were cut by a machine.

Have you considered sending it in for certification? It would cost about $30, and at a value of about $125 for a Scott 444 pair, it might be worth it.

Matt

Hi, Matt... thanks for the input, but I'd never
send a used 444 pair in for a cert... I've got
a few mint singles and probably 2-3 mint pairs,
so, if I ever opt for certs, it'll be the mint
specimens which I'll be sending...

After 50 years of being a (non-expert) collector,
I knew from the outset it wasn't a 491... I know
enough about W/F's to make positive ID on just
about anything after this amount of time vested...
the mention of '491' was just 'bait' to draw in
the curiosity of others to talk about the pair
to help me identify it...

At this stage, I'm sure there must be a minute
watermark (somewhere) which I'm not seeing... pure
logic dictates (that)...

Lastly... there's certainly the possibility of
either 453 or 454 (albeit I admittedly am too
lazy [given it's a cancel] to see if it's either
of those)... there's just not enough 'meat on the
bones' of either of the three to put in futher
effort...

Randall

Randall