US 220A/220c Joined Pair

Just found this on the APS website archive, cert. #215273. A cancelled 220A/220C pair recently certified. APS shows no other certificates to match it. Scott lists it as a possibility, but is it rare or just scarce?

Certainly at least fairly scarce. I have seen a few strips and blocks with both but not very often. Also strips and blocks where all the stamps are one or the other, also fairly scarce.

Here is an example of such a pair from my collection, warts and all:




It too is a reconstructed used pair of stamps that had been side by side from the day of manufacture.

I have not studied the plate layout for the plate bearing these two, but I am aware of the note in Brookman that the first four columns (vertical rows) of the left pane were of the "cap on left 2 only" variety, and then in column 5 the break over both numerals begins to appear. As I recall it is a 400 subject plate, so if the entire column 5 was of the "cap on both 2" variety, then each full sheet could have up to 20 such pairs. I don't think it is quite that many, but cannot recall. Nonetheless, if we multiply that by the number of impressions of the plate that were completed prior to its retirement, something between 25-50 thousand, then the potential number of such pairs from that one plate could be as high as 1,000,000.

I will leave it to others to project the survival rate of these pairs.