#64 Or #65

thanks for your help.

this stamp should be #65 lilac rose?

Dittrich, we have had a lot of conversations and topics on the shades of this stamp. Bottom line you cannot identify them with a scan or with a picture on the Internet. I have posted a lot of the shades if you like to go back into some of my posts. But there's no way for us to really tell you if that is lilac rose from a scan or not, and the real shame is there are no references where you can also find whether it is lilac rose or not. Sorry, Ray

@carlberky - the suggestion to use #248 as a color touchstone for the 3c pinks of 1861 is decidedly poor advice. I do not recommend it, nor comparison with the pinks of the Bank Note issues (e.g. #159 or 186). The National Bank Note Company printed the 3c pinks of 1861, but all those other stamps were printed by other companies. There is no reason to suppose that they all made their versions of pink ink, for use on a particular paper, in the same way.

Trying to make this distinction on the basis of scans is positively ludicrous. It is hard enough to do when you can compare the actual stamps to one another. I have a certified pink and a rose pink as touchstones, and it is still difficult.




In Europe maybe. But easy or not, a good stamp on cover should stay there.

That 3c with target (concentric rings) cancel has a SOTN strike of the cancel, but it does not tie the stamp to the cover. That leaves open the question of whether or not it is original to the cover, and so the value of the cover is less than it would be, even though the value of the cancelled stamp is improved by that strike. Leave it on unless you NEED to remove it, since it is easier to preserve intact as is.

However, the stamp that is tied by the strike of a paid cancel is much better off to stay on the cover. The stamp has a straight edge, and that would work against it if removed. Taking it off would also make the strike partially incomplete even though the word PAID is completely on the stamp. However, to my eye, that stamp is the best candidate for being one of the pink shades of any you have showed us. Having it tied to cover would multiply its market value, and the fact that it is a clear and complete strike of the PAID cancel just adds to that. [But here again, It might just be the way the scan was made that makes me think that. It needs to be compared with a known pink directly.] But pink or not, this is one to leave on cover. So if the cover annoys you, sell it for a good price to an American and buy an off cover example that pleases you.

@essayk, your mine, the stamp is not the original from cover?


I have scan last stamp with two #159? who stamp to suit as comparison?



is stamp a #64b?

Dittrich, essayk just told you that we can't tell you if it's pink or rose pink. It was accurate advice. You can't use a 159 to compare, either. If you think it's pink, then your only recourse is to send it for a cert.

If the cover is not dated 1861, it will be more difficult to be certified as pink. If it's later than Feb/March of 1862, it isn't pink.
Hope this helps, Ray

thanks @ray.mac, the cover is 14-Nov 186(x)... you mine is not 1861, how to see?

You might be able to use a scanner like a Canoscan 9900F to compare colors. Two stamps of different shades will appear different on a scanner, even if the colors as rendered on a computer monitor are not entirely accurate.

Based on presentations at the Institute of Analytic Philately seminar, the pink appearance of 64 and 64b is a result of adding ultramarine ink. Rose Scott 64 examples have none. I would conjecture that it would be possible to detect the ultramarine signature with a scanner. It is known that 64 or 64b appear bluish compared to normal 64 stamps under UV light.

Clark

Clark,

I too appreciate the capabilities of the instrumentation. But in the matter of color identification there is an intangible with which we still must contend. You also remember from those presentations, particularly the one on color by Bob M., that sometimes the instruments discern a color shade that the visual receptors of the human eye would not accord with the machine determination. Color naming in the hobby is still largely a matter of convention, and color discrimination is a matter of perception. The question they asked is whether we are to believe that a pigeon blood pink is that because a scanner said so, even if no one who looks at it would agree.

Bob had said that the early batch of ink had the highest concentration of ultramarine ink, but as they continued to add ink to the fountain the concentration of ultramarine decreased until it was not detectable. The physics is pretty straightforward, but the question of when the line is crossed between the named color shades is up for grabs in part because the distinctions have never been quantified.

@dittrich

Ever eager to take stamps off cover, I see. I do not wish to support that approach to collecting. But to your question...

I did not say that the stamp is not original to the cover. I said that because it is not tied it leaves that question open to conjecture, at least from the standpoint of philatelic judging. I am sure that careful examination using more than one kind of test might be able to settle that, but the very fact that it is not obvious has an effect on the utility, and therefore the value, of the combination. In short, it will suffer in an exhibit and in the marketplace. Does that make it a candidate for dissection? Not necessarily. It hurts nothing to leave it as is, even if you don't really like covers, and may be just the thing for a fancy cancel collector. So let the next guy decide whether to take it off, and offer it either way. But if you have a place in your collection that NEEDS the stamp to be off cover, and you have no context for the whole cover, then the world will have to spin with one less old cover on it.

Clark,
Is it not true that inks and colors can change over time (even after a cert has been issued)? In my opinion, any forum discussion about colors shades is good to determine if a person should consider spending money on a cert but should not be taken as definitive. Hopefully at and some point surface analysis using atomic or gas chromatic mass spectrometer technologies will be used to make definitive color and ink determinations. (I am a objective data kind of guy since I feel this always trumps subjectivity.)

One day in the future I can see technology being able to help us make these definitive color shade determinations and we may see some surprising results. Stamps with certs may have to be revisited. Others which don't appear to be a 64b by unaided eye are analyzed and the ultramarine ink found. (Similar to how DNA was used to overturn many eye witness accounts.)

I think the best thing we can do now is like essayk wrote; be good stewards of our material, do not do anything which may impact or damage the artifacts, document what we currently know for future generations.
Don

dittrich,
You have many beautiful stamps. However, due to inaccuracies of non-color calibrated images, we cannot tell you exactly what you have.

Despite non-color calibrated images, the color of your stamp images do not seem to be "true pinks". I.E. #64 or #64b. Your stamps appear to have too much red to be "pinks".

The "PAID" stamp is close to a "pink" but does not have contrast under the "3". It cannot be a "true pink". #65 Lilac rose could be a correct possible shade identification.

Give this a read: https://goscf.com/t/44769&whichpage=3#380475

ray.mac, you have previously posted many identified shades which I absolutely appreciate your effort in doing so. However, nearly all of them appear incorrectly due to them being a non-standard Epson defined color profile.

The concentric ring cancelled stamp does have the requisite contrast under the "3" and is very different than a pink. It is very red.

"I would conjecture that it would be possible to detect the ultramarine signature with a scanner." Jack Daley does exactly this with his analyses with 9600 dpi scans. I implore every student of this issue to try to repeat his analysis which to my observations are entirely accurate.

There is much study of color shades that were not presented at the Institute of Analytic Philately seminar. I wish that I could have attended and presented my findings. For now, I implore all to analyze this issue by studying 9600 dpi scans which approach one pixel per ink particle. Jack Daley has found consistent patterns that are the basis for my own observations. His observations have consistently identified shades even when low resolution images have been presented to him. I strongly believe that we should spend considerable effort to quantify his abilities.

stallzer,
your #64a certified example is not color calibrated and even if it was the exact shade of Pigeon Blood Pink it is not agreed upon color by all experts. #64a identification is highly contentious. Mike McClung found that #64a is not a single identifiable shade. He found it to be a range of shades that others considered to be so based upon an extreme of the three "pink" shades. No one has definitively described the shade. Identifying it so far has been entirely subjective to the expertiser.