Auction For Scott 19B, 20- Help With ID

Dudley - I agree - its a pretty ugly mistake on their part.
Here is the text on the cert from the PF:


"AND WE ARE OF THE OPINION THAT

IT IS NOT SCOTT 19b, RATHER IT IS A SCOTT 20, TYPE II, POS. 87L4. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * "

In no way am I slamming the PF - they do great work, and I respect everyone there. Everyone makes mistakes, however.

So after 2 full pages of discussion, had any of this information been called to the attention of Kelleher?

For me, this is all simply an intellectual discussion trying to ascertain the truth of the stamp. I learned many years ago to never correct a dealer in an unsolicited fashion. If they ask me, for information, I'll gladly help, but I've seen some bad things happen and had some not very good experiences myself. This is a hobby - for fun, so I leave all of that to someone who is willing to take the bullet, so to speak.

John,

I would be amazed if the 3 or 4 largest philatelic auction sites don't have employees reading these forums. If they don't, shame on them and their business practices as they are missing out on understanding how the hobby is evolving from a collector standpoint . You would think they want to know what is popular, what is being discussed... they need to have a pulse on the stamp collecting hobby. I think PF is also watching these forums. If not, They should be! They need to be involved in social media and understand praises and criticisms of their work.

txstamp mentioned a top row plate 4 stamp that often is IIIA instead of II. This auction recently ended and looks like it might be a IIIA Top Row, though the perfs cut in too much probably to be sure.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SCOTT-20-GO...047675.l2557

lukusw - hard to be sure on that one. It might be, but probably not enough left to tell due to bad centering.

If I recall correctly, position 3L4 is the one most frequently a IIIA. I had an imperforate and a perforated copy, and I want to say that both were IIIA's, although I never sent them to the PF ... they had pretty big breaks, easily > .2mm to satisfy the criteria.

I parted with my stuff over 10 years ago, so my memory may be a bit funny, but I'm pretty sure that the perforated one I had was a IIIA as well. That is telling, since on plate 4, usually the perforated impressions tend to be better than their imperforate counterparts. I haven't ever seen any evidence of plate re-entry, aka double-transfers, so I'll continue to run with Ashbrook/Neinken's explanation. That is that the sheets were printed, then stacked LIFO (last in first out), and used from the top. So the imperforates, used first, were the most worn printings, followed later by the perforated ones, which, at the bottom were better printings. Its a simplistic explanation, which may not be precisely correct, but it seems as though something like that may well have occurred.

Why does that matter for this discussion? Well, if the perforated impression is an earlier printing than the imperforate impression, which seems likely based upon empirical evidence of plate 4 stamps, then if the the perforated one has a broken bottom line, that says that the line was really weak, and that its likely that many, maybe even most 3L4's had a broken bottom line. I don't know what the percentage of 3L4's that are Ty II vs Ty IIIA are.