Official Stamp

I don't collect these ,but it seems the 6 cent Dept. of Interior shows a clear double transfer in the top label.

I you are talking about the shadowing of the letters in the top label, those are normal.








The size varience is due to paper shrinkage, the paper was dampened before printing, and when drying, shrank at different rates depending on the direction of the paper grain, so they all will vary some in size. The stamp on the right does have a drop if ink on part of the numeral 1, but that has nothing to do with its identity.

In the Scott specialized, at the end of the listings of the Official stamps, after O120 is the section Headinf Special Printings. which say in part " Although perforated, these stamps were some times (but not always) cut apart with scissors" First Printing= stamp far right, the one with the ink drop!
The Second Printing was all on ribbed paper, whichnis hard to see in a scan like this but ribbed paper shows fiberous perf tips, 2nd Printing= Center stamp. Which leaves the Third Printing, which was printed by American Bank Note Co. on soft paper. The identifing trait is in the overprint. The first two printings were less than 6 months apart, and done by Continental BNC, using the same over print plate. American had to make their own overprint plate, and did not use the same sized type, notice the varing size of the type in the overprint, and the slightly different color.

Yup! That's what I saw, did not know that was the way they were all printed. Karl

littleriverphil, good education, thanks for information and the background to the differences.

Keep up the good work.

Top notch information.

Cheers

Dave

I need to correct my mistake is refering to the American printed stamp as the third printing when it is in fact the fourth printing, the soft paper Executive and Navy Specimens are the third printing.The following is a corrected list of the printings and their respective dates.
1st Printing by Continental BNC
July 1875 All Departmental stamps

2nd Printing by Continental BNC
Dec 1875 1 Cent Agriculture, Executive, Justice, State

3rd Printing by American BNC
Feb 1881 1 Cent Executive, Navy

4th Printing by American BNC
Aug 1881 1 Cent State

5th Printing by American BNC
Dec 1883 1 Cent Agriculture, Executive, War


"Positive identification of the American Bank Note Company fifth printing has yet to be made, and scholars are divided into two camps. The first camp alleges that the fifth printing is on soft paper but did not have the SPECIMEN overprint. The stamp is known and appears in the Scott catalog as number 094."*

"The second camp notes that the I¢ Agriculture stamp with SPECIMEN overprint exists on an intermediate soft paper"*

*Volume: 46 Number: 4 Year: 1994 Chronicle: 164