3cent Washington #158 Or 184

The pic of the back of the stamps that show #158 and #184 would the stamp marked #158 be marked wrong? Doesn't it have a soft porous look of the American and the stamp marked #184 be a hard white paper look of Continental? Trying to learn a little hear.

Also the stamp marked #184 if you look at the part under the chin and down across the chest, passing thru the vignette dark in green color and down into the Number 3 little lighter. Another dark green line passing across the chest and down to the vignette. There is another green line starting on the shoulders and going thru the C of cents. Would/could these be plate cracks or just plate scratches? The color of the lines are all green like the color green in the vignette. I haven't read about cracks or lines on #184, but on #158 which I ask today if the stamps are marked correctly or not?

Thank you

Whats the question?

Also the eye on on the right stamp #158 is darker than the stamp on right. The stamp on the left #184 there are no lines going across the nose as on the right stamp and there doesn't seem to be any dots in between the eyes neither. Could someone help on that as well?
Thank you

The green steaks you are seeing do not appear to be the result of defects to the plate, but rather seem to be due to incomplete wiping of the plate during printing. These are ambient problems and do not have significant market value, but they do dress up a display.

As for the ID numbers on the reverses, they seem to be okay. The left stamp is mostly blocking the light when the right stamp is letting it through. That is consistent with soft and hard paper respectively for a low level of transillumination. I know you wanted to imagine that the left stamp was a 158 so the streaks could be seen as plate flaws, but alas, it is not so.

essayk thank you. I was leaning toward the scratch or wiping thing but had to ask.

The edge of the perfs have a strange look about them. Is that just a phenomenon of the scan, or are they regummed?

It is just the scan. On both pictures the background was black, but you would never know it from the scan. Not the best one around.

I rarely disagree with essayk but in my humble opinion, those lines on the left stamp are either plate scratches or cracks and definitely are interesting and add value. Would need to see it in person to be sure.

If he's offering, have Bill look it over. You can always tell more in person than from a scan.

Wouldn't wiping be more likely to cause smears rather than solid straight lines? I would think those lines were caused by tool marks rather than a wiping rag.

A couple of things are influencing my perception, but I will also admit that I cannot see everything I need to see to be sure. Specifically, it looks to me like there is some kind of "busyness" (that looks like smearing) going on in the vignette background shading just above the lines that look like scratches. If so, then the lines might just be the trailing edge of a smear from poor wiping. I won't go to the mat over it since I cannot see anything well enough to be certain.

But as I tried to imagine other possibilities, I made the assumption that the damage, if that is what it is, took place after case hardening and not before. Plate inspection would certainly have caught marks like these if they had been there prior to hardening. [That assumption is, of course, the Achilles heel in my line of thinking.]

To understand the kinds of disfiguring marks a hardened plate might receive, it helps to think of what conditions are necessary for those marks to appear. The malleability of finished plates in the 1870s and 80s is not as flexible as things were in the 1850s. Case-hardening makes the surface hard and brittle so that chipping and crumbling of the metal are more likely than scratching.

By the time we get to the 1870s, case-hardening has reached the point that once a plate is hardened, light scratches don't occur on hardened plates, and the normal "tools" are not going to be the cause of defacement. The kinds of marks you will see after case-hardening will be the result of shop accidents involving a moving plate or large hard object making contact. You might see some signs of abrasion from rubbing two plates together, or gouging from having a plate make hard contact with a hard pointed object (such as the corner of another hardened plate).

The usual treatment of a plate damaged after hardening was the retirement of the plate, because annealing (softening a hardened plate) was a risky and difficult process. Add to that the problems/costs with the burnishing and re-engraving of the damage, let alone the hazards of re-entering an annealed plate even for one cliché, and then re-hardening with its higher risk of cracking, all added up to costs greater than entering a new plate. Consider, for example, that when it was deemed necessary to re-engrave the dies for the 1c and 3c stamps in 1881, the engravers used acid to do the carving on the original, case-hardened dies (why they didn't work entirely from new laydowns is beyond me, but the original dies were no longer available later). But the job of re-entering a plate would have been horrendous.

Now that is a heck of a lot of supposition and guesswork, based on limited probabilities, and I don't place much confidence in it when I have so little in the image to go on. Seeing the actual stamp and getting a look at the texture and extent of the marking might give me a better sense of what actually did happen to cause the marks I do see. But at least now you know how I am thinking of it.

The 158 appears strongly to be regummed... the diagonal streaks on the gum (could be) a very amateur regumming job leaving brushmarks...

Another possibility (albeit possibly more far-fetched) would be if it had been steamed off of a contoured envelope, having diagonal lines...

For Bill, thanks for tuning in again -Yeah Bill I can send the stamp on the left to you. I'm a little confused about the price though? Is it $5.00 or $30.00. Didn't know if it is something quick or may take a few?

stampcrow and disi123 on the #158 at first I thought it was toning from being so old and being in the folder book. Then I thought maybe from the scanner or possibly being lifted from an envelope(but not used), but after further reviewing of the stamp I do think I see some glue on some of the fibers in the perfs, but not all of them. This is the first time this stamp or any stamp has seen day light since 1969. Just now going over them since I was a kid with the grand d. It hurts but feels good!

essayk and littleriverphil on the #184 there is some ("busyness") going on in the vignette. There are some squiggly lines in front of the face, but the dark lines or at least a couple of those start getting thinner but are not straight but start getting curved. There is also a a curved line before the #3 that runs thru the white oval. The line that runs from the shoulder down into the C of cents is not straight at all but curved. Not for sure but I think I see another deep dark line running just passed the white oval from the PO of postage to the top of his head? Also it looks like George is smiling.

Why are some stamps soooo hard and some are like turning on a switch?

Thank you