Scott 406c Lake Color Variety

nope

I agree with Ken Srail. The identification of #219D is relatively simple. No expert service would make such a mistake. It must be a function of the scan or the photo.

Don makes some good points, but there is *NO* "oversight" of the expert services except the most important one - market perception. If an expert service is making lots of mistakes (and I don't know who "keeps score"!) then the marketplace will make the adjustments necessary in the long run and will favor those who become more respected than the others.

As far as transparency, I agree 100% with Don, but unfortunately, several of the bigger services are not huge fans of transparency, for fear, I suppose, of their competition gaining an edge somehow. It's a competitive field and several of the services are not for profit, while several more are, creating an uneven playing field in some ways or at least a different perspective from each other. I have, over the years, tried several times to act as a "go between" with the other services to try to get (for example), standardization of terminology or procedures. In each case, I received different levels of co-operation and different "requirements" from the services. And in every case, my initiatives were, in the end, abandoned for lack of co-operation.

Just to follow-up on the 219D/220 color shades, here's a group of stamps from my reference collection:



As you can see, some legitimate 219D shades have quite a bit of carmine in them (like the right stamp in the top row, which I call pale carmine lake,) and some of the 220 carmine shades get pretty dark (like the middle stamp in the bottom row, the Scott-listed dark carmine.)

These various shades of Scott 219D are well-known but for some reason not listed in the Scott Specialized (which just lists "lake.") There's no doubt that all 4 stamps in the top row belong in the 219D family though.

Comparing "dark lake" Scott 219D with "carmine" Scott 220 shows a very stark contrast of shades, leaving no doubt about the identity. However, comparing pale carmine lake 219D with dark carmine 220 isn't nearly as obvious... I frequently see "borderline" stamps like that misidentified (both ways.)

BTW, if you look back at the stockpages of 219D/220 stamps that Don posted earlier, you'll see some pretty "carmine-looking" 219D's (like the third stamp from the right, bottom row.) That stamp listed by itself might elicit the same questions about whether it was correctly identified as a 219D (it is, IMO.)

Srail, thank you for that scan. We can see the variations of each type on one scanner (yours) and one monitor (ours).

The threshold between the two closest examples is subtle. I wonder how expertising services differentiate them? It used to only be experienced eyeballs. What about now? Color calibrated equipment and software? Is there a single threshold point?

IMO, all major expertizing firms have good reference collections. That's why they're very unlikely to misidentify a shade like 219D (and if they do, much more likely a clerical error than an error by the expertizer.) I think a bigger issue is one of evolving standards. What qualifies today as Indian red (or pigeon blood pink, or blackish violet, etc.) isn't necessarily what used to qualify as that shade...

That makes buying rare shades with old certs pretty risky. And just to be clear, standards don't always "tighten." In some cases (some might argue "many" cases,) the standards have weakened, and stamps undeserving of certs as those scarce shades are now receiving them.