A Little Help With That #%$@! 1861 Pink

top middle - hands down. Yeah I'm feelin' a bit cocky today! lol I haven't read through the whole thread yet....so if this was answered already I guess I'll be posting again...ha-ha!

it actually looks like there may me two but leaning towards that Boston PAID cancel...

Hokey Smokes..- I GOT IT!



I apologize for all the extra post chatter but I wanted to play and scrolling through I seen that Bill had posted... lol I still wouldn't that confident with any of mine though. I've learned to err on the side of caution simply because of the age of said stamp and environmental considerations.. That was fun and believe me when I say I needed a smile today!

Essay K's grilled essay is definitely pink, but a lighter shade of pink than the stamp with PAID cancel. I do not believe the right hand essay is pink. Pink is a more pastel shade that any shade of rose or the other shades of #65s. It is said to have a tinge of "blue" in the ink. Pigeon Blood is said to have a tinge of purple in it. I don't think I can see either of those. I "see" pink based on my eye/mind memory of it combined with a good certified reference copy.

And I intensely dislike Ott lights and find them totally inadequate for viewing stamps. Instead, I prefer very strong overhead lighting. I have 3 spotlights in ceiling tracks above my desk, each 120w. Now THAT is a lot of light!

Ott lamps are over rated, for the best lighting for viewing colors full spectrum lighting is your best option.

I posted information a while back and I'd post the link but I'm on my piece of junk Ipad and Apple devices are copy / paste challenged. If you type in the search box "desk lamp recommendations" you will find the information on the CRI (color rendering index) and the proper Kelvin temp for natural lighting.

Thanks Stallzer, here's the link.
https://goscf.com/t/28910&SearchTerms=desk,lamp

Many years ago, the late Harry Weiss told me that if you held the stamp at an oblique angle you would see a bluish haze over the image if it were the pink. Frankly, I thought he was crazy until I tried it and it worked.

Definitely. I picked the middle stamp too (before reading the thread), but the fact that we knew up front that one of them was a certified 64 was a huge factor. If the question had been "do any of these look like a 64", I would have shrugged and said "maybe".

I have a 3c 1861 that I pulled aside a while back as a possible pink, because it looks pink compared to a hundred or so others that I've held it next to. Yet I'm 99.9% sure that it's not really pink, because the odds are still well against me (100k vs. ~1.8 billion issued), and it looks noticeably "duller" than the 64s I've seen posted. There are so many shades of this stamp that it's far too easy to mistake fools gold for the real thing if you're not careful.

Here is a pretty nice example of a #64 pink;

http://www.ebay.com/itm/U-S-64-RARE...em4d1346a44d

Great discussion folks......
My guess is that the '61 cover is a carmine rose, which is very prevalent in '61...have a bunch of them, several that were ID'd by Mike McClung, who is the guru of the specialized 1861 shades....

Just an observance....essayk, your scans of the three together in close up....if you can do that at 9600dpi, with just the saturated area under the upper left "3" (right, if there's a cancel in the way) is another definitive way to identify pink vs. rose pink vs. PBP.

You can use Photoshop or Photoshop Elements (or Photoshop, I'm sure) to enhance the image, and then look not just at the pixels, but the wash between the pixels. ---If there is a lot of yellow, which added to carmine makes brown, which is how one gets rose shades, it won't be pink. The true pinks have more of a white wash vs. yellow....could be rose pink depending on the amount of pink in the pixels.
---A lot of the '61s will have pixels that are carmine/red in shade, but on the yellow side of the spectrum...which makes the stamp salmon rose, and there are a lot of stamps I bought that I thought might be pinks or rose pinks that ended up salmon rose....and depending on the number of pink and violet pixels, it can be salmon rose pink which is still 64B vs. 65.

If you're able to scan just that part of the "3", with a 9600dpi, I'm also happy to look at the scan for you.....not an expert here, that's definitely Bill (and I have a few things I'm going to send him this weeks, btw), but might be able to give you a guesstimate on the specialized shade.

And those that look pink or pinkish, if they're not from '61, they could be "Brooklyn pink" which is from '63, and very pink, but still #65. Several references to Brooklyn Pink in The Chronicle, and I think that Ashbrook came up with the term "Brooklyn Pink", IIRC.

Merry Christmas....hope this is helpful....Ray

Examples of the "3" and the stamps:



Jack Daley sold me this as a "Carmine Rose Pink" but also said it might be a 64 instead.....




Posted this one awhile back....formerly #66 (Lake) now 66TC

Again, just love this stuff........Ray

Hello Ray,

I thank you for sharing your expertise, but some of it is a bit confusing.

What do you mean by "You can use Photoshop or Photoshop Elements (or Photoshop, I'm sure) to enhance the image,..." Is there a certain technique that you use or are you just talking about zooming/enlargement?

"...and then look not just at the pixels, but the wash between the pixels." I do not know what you mean by "wash". Can you please elaborate?

In your first enlargement of the area around the "3" I can sort of see what you are talking about with some areas of yellow. However, I cannot follow what you say in full understanding. If you are willing, posting examples of the types that you describe and arrows pointing out the relevant areas would allow me and the hundreds of others following this thread to understand exactly what you are trying to convey.

I thought that the rose shades were pink (red + white pigments) with a bit of blue added in. This seems very different from your explanation of how rose shades were constructed. Please help me/us understand.

Regardless of difficulties in understanding, I thank you. These topics are fascinating to me and I share your love of them. I wish you a merry Christmas as well.

Ryan

P.S. I love the impression of your "Carmine Rose Pink" stamp. This design is amongst my top 3 favorites. I love how three dimensional Washington's bust is. Overall, it is just a wonderfully beautiful stamp.

That beautiful page I had on all the shades (http://3cent1861.com) is now a "go Daddy" site... :( What a shame. I loved reading over that. Oh well..

ILS, archive.org has a copy of that site. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like they archived the images. It looks like the owner's ebay store also no longer exists, so I fear whatever archive.org didn't capture might be gone for good.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140809110308/http://3cent1861.com/Home_Page.html

edit: apparently the board screws up the link. If you copy the entire thing and paste it into your broswer's address bar, it should work.

Ray and I spoke on the phone today. He is extremely knowledgeable about the color shades of this series, is very objective, wants to further the ease of identification of color shades, and is quite a genuine and lovely person to speak with. In our conversation he explained more about his posts on this thread. Give me some time and I will update you all with my experimentation of identifying color that hopefully will be accessible to all.

Ray, thanks again.