Picked Up Some Revenue Stamps At A Recent Auction.

I was hoping to buy a group of covers that included, four zeppelin flown. One was the interrupted flight of 1929.
Alas...that lot sold for more than twice what I was willing to pay.

Feeling burned, I foolishly bought a poor quality, horde lot. Something I told myself I would stop doing...

Here are some of the BOB's in the lot.

This one is my favorite. Love the color. R89a I think.


Here is a faulty R80c. clipped corner and a fold across the chin.


R86c


R70a


R110

The red marking on the R70a says
DEPOSIT.....
DUTY........
EXCESS......
It's a custom house marking that shows up frequently on imperf $1 values, although it shows up on others as well. I believe it was used in San Francisco.

Thank you Rev.

It would be interesting to see a better scan of the R89, but I fear that it is a trimmed perforated example rather than a genuine imperf. That shade and an 1869 year date do not bode well, alas.

Ahhh rev, that's my favorite stamp from the lot (page and a half). I'll get more pics up, including the back. We'll see what it shows.

I can't get a clear pic of the back. But I think the shot below shows some of what you're seeing. Certainly some nicks showing. Oh well. A bad lot just got a little worse...

These two look better. The right side of the R78 looks has the look of being separated using a straight edge.
Any thoughts?

You are correct, some kind of steel rule or straight edge was used on that stamp. Both of these are genuine imperfs.
That second shot of the R89 merely confirms what was fairly obvious before.

Rev,having a black background really is important. These were in an album, on white 'vis-o-grip' pages. Good looking pages. They are nice and easy on the stamps when handling. But...

All stamps are much easier to see on a black background. Even when you know them well.

A bit late to the party, but yes, that R89 set all sorts of alarm bells in my mind when I first saw it. Narrow margins, late cancel, vivid red-orange color. It takes a while, but you learn to recognize which ink colors are indicative of early vs. late printings.

Regarding scanning stamps, I always scan the stamps for my site against a solid black non-textured background. Not gray, and not a stock card with texture.

In fact, for expediency purposes, I took a black plastic approval card and taped it to the back of a block of wood. I put the stamp face down on the scanner glass with the block on top and the scanner lid open.

This accomplishes a number of goals:

1. No plastic or glassine between the stamp and the scanner glass. Every layer between optics and the stamp potentially produces distortion, glare, or skews color.

2. Stamp is weighed down by the block to be made perfectly flat. In my experience, this does a better job than the scanner lid, which can have padding.

Example:

Well, my first problem is...I don't have a working scanner.
Getting a close up with my camera creates lighting issues, as you can see. But, at least rev was able to give me a good heads up on the R89.