Can You Help Me Decide?

Those essays will do nicely! Wonderful stuff.

Essay,

10c I grill was described by Siegel auctions as one of rarest stamps. An example in auction yesterday with similar centering to your example sold for 11,000$.

Siegel claims there are only about a dozen used copies in existence, 3 unused.
I was curious if you have a back story about that stamp. Perhaps you just bought it at auction as I grill, or was it misidentified as h grill and later determined to be I after Scott changed listing?

Really wonderful collection . Enjoyed viewing all of those grills together !

You may de-ignorize here:

https://goscf.com/t/37738 ... Government "re-use paranoia" and other word pictures

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

essayk, what a wonderful collection of H and I early state grills. It would be helpful from my perspective to highlight in a heading that these are all early state grills. At first I thought you were saying that there were no known 7 cent I grills. Since there definitely are (and many of them, it seems), all 7 cent I grills must be late state, which I did not know. Do you know why that would be the case? It would seem to me that if late state 7 cent I grills exist, early state 7 cent I grills must exist also. Again, a wonderful set of these grills; I especially envy your 90 cent I grill!

Thanks, ikey. I have since been enlightened, but it`s great having the link!

I agree with CJPalermo re: Wow factor. All are very handsome.

Visually, the #1 presentation could be even stronger by adding the black frames around each item.
Frames help each item "pop" off the page.
Also, consider a slightly larger font size for the first heading to gain reader attention.

Thanks for the feedback guys. Judging by the response here it looks like the choice should be the page of National early-state grills. Okay, I will continue to work with that. I must confess that I'm a little sorry the essays don't do as much for you as the grilled stamps, but it is what it is.

The late state grills are stronger and easier to see on the obverses, but the sets for both grill types are smaller since not all denominations are known for either H or I late. In a full exhibit they would appear on another page or two.


KGB:
I did a revision of the initial page writeup to clarify the purpose of it all. Would this help:?
"Originally introduced in 1867, grilling attempted to break the fibers of stamp paper to permit better penetration of cancelling ink, impeding removal for reuse. The roller used to produce the grill arrays was sharpened at intervals by grinding, which altered the size of each array. From 1870 to 1873 two main array sizes (H and I) are recognized for these stamps from National and each has an early and a late state."

rgstamp:
The 10c early state I-grill on this page was purchased as an I-grill out of a Michael Aldrich sale, but without certificate. It looked right, and was described as such, but I sent it to the PF for confirmation. They agreed. Since then I have acquired a couple more candidates, one of which I am quite sure is good, but I have not sent them in yet. So far all examples I have seen are early state grills. In fact, so far, as of mid-2015, no one has confirmed on a 10c late state I-grill.


Rhett:
It's interesting that you would pick up on the need to call attention to the state. I have revised the header in a newer version of the page, and it now reads,
"National Bank Note Co. grills of 1870-73 – early state" It is now one point size larger than before.

Regarding the 7c I-grill grill state. So far no one has confirmed on an early state I grill for the 7c. The late state I-grill is so prominent, that in my experience the majority of well struck grills on the 7c stamps are I-grills. Why late and not early? The 7c was issued later. By the time its initial run was depleted (with mostly early state H-grills), which took a while since the stamp was not needed right away, the grill roller had reached the late state for the type and so the bulk of the grilled stamps were done with the late I-grill.

As for the 90c I-grill example here, it has not been submitted to the PF yet. The cost of a cert for it will come in at $1000, so it may take a while. It looks like a good candidate for all the checkpoints, but until it is confirmed I won't discuss it. Still, I have enough confidence in it that I felt it was okay to include in the one page display as is.

essayk, thanks for all the great info; I was not aware of the reasoning on the 7 center states. We are of the same thought on the relative scarcity between H and I grills on the 7 centers; when the I grills were first listed as major numbers I checked my 3 grilled bank note 7 centers and two out of the three were I grills! On every other denomination, all I had were H grills. I still think there are probably more H grill 7 centers than I grill 7 centers but the I grill is definitely not so scarce on the 7 center. On most of the other denominations, however, the I grill is much scarcer than the H grill. I collect both the H and I grills since the I grills are now major numbers in Scott but I don't consider the differences between early and late states.
If you do get the PF cert on the 90c I grill, please share it here as I would love to see that. And thanks again for the look at your great collection of these grills.

Looking good!