#10? I'm New To These

Dated August 27, 1851 on the letter it's attached to. This seems to make it definitely a 10 or 10a. http://www.uspcs.org/the-1851-1860-...51-3c-issue/ has examples that don't make it clear, but it seems to be a 10 and not a 10A. The color does seem to be the correct Orange Brown.

The next step in philately seems to be matching it to a plate position. I'm very happy to have one of these on a cover, but I find it fascinating that these stamps are so closely scrutinized as to be able to identify them to plate position.

Plate position seems to be made using comparisons with known examples. http://www.stamps4collectors.com/in...cphotos.html seems like a great place to start.

Does anyone have some tips and or tricks of how to effectively sort through all of them? http://www.uspcs.org/the-1851-1860-...2%A2-plates/ appears to sort them into subtypes, but is still confusing to me until I spend a lot of time researching them. I'm not asking for any of you to do the work for me. I'm asking for useful information before I take the plunge and stare at all of this information for days. Thank you.

Looks like a #10A from Plate 1E or i. Color seems to be unusually pale. May be an early printing from Plate 1E.

You really should buy Chase's 3c book, it can be bought pretty cheap quite often. The 3c stamp of 1851-61 is a fascinating area of study.

I forgot to adjust the black level of the scan. It looks much closer to original now.

Getting that book is on my to do list. Thanks.

This book is neither expensive nor in high demand, but it sure is hard to come by! There have been five books sold on ebay since August and none are currently listed on Amazon. For those that are interested in a digital copy, visit the USPCS digital library and download a copy of the book http://www.uspcs.org/resource-cente...nic-library/

I advocate supporting their work with a donation via Paypal.

Brian

Thanks for the link. That is the 1942 version. There appears to be another version printed in 1975 which I don't know if it was revised or not.

This has further information and some useful images of all of the 1851 series:
https://archive.org/details/The1851...etrospective

Does anyone know what became of this:
"It is a source of considerable gratification that I am able to make this extraordinary plating available to the collecting public by electronic scans which will be almost as useful as working with the originals. Hopefully this technique will be a forerunner of similar scans of other platable classic stamps, thereby enlarging the resources available to all collectors which used to be available only to a privileged few.
Jerome S. Wagshal
Written In the first year of The Third Millennium
Rockville, Maryland"
From: https://www.siegelauctions.com/2010...ardplate.pdf

Jerry's article was never published. The plating was sold as lot 3003 in Part III of the sale of Jerry Wagshal's collection (Siegel Auction 996, October 21, 2006) for $35,000 hammer.

Bummer, but thanks for the answer.

On that 1975 publication date, you might be referring to the Quarterman reprint, which Leonard Hartman (Philatelic Bibliopole) describes as "The 3¢ Stamp of the U.S., 1851-57 by Dr. Carroll L. Chase 1976 corrected 1942 edition in the format of the 1929 edition, out of print"

But you could try this link:
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Boo...=13035576540


No the server augments it to something not recognized:

Put this as a single string without the spaces in your browser's locator bar:
http://www. abebooks.com/servlet/ BookDetails PL?bi= 13035576540

I'm on the search for the newest version of the Chase book. I still have a lot of reading before I have a basic knowledge of the plating of these stamps and the relationships between colors, plates, and issues.

I'm updating this thread because I just received two more of this series:



All 3 stamps were scanned into the same image so their color differences should be very accurate between each other. The leftmost stamp is the original 10A that I first posted. I now understand the difference between type I and II clearly.

Until I learn plating to a level of basic competency, I have a few questions. The middle stamp seems to be a later version of a 10A. It's also smaller than the other two. Is this one a more normal deepness of color? Maybe sulfuretted a bit?

The rightmost stamp has a slightly different color and has some very distinctive rework attributes. What color does it seem to be despite the inaccuracy of the interwebs? Its detail seems to make it not a #10 and is a type III. Dull red? Is there any significance to the odd perforation on the left edge?

The middle stamp seems to have a spattering of crud. Any idea of what this is? Can and should this be removed?

Here they are individually for better detail:







-edited for clarity and I forgot an "A"