This Stamp Is Advertized As A Z-Grilll, I Can't See Anything In This Picture To Confirm It Though.

Sorry to bother you guys with this messy picture,I can't tell what it is except it is 14 points wide and 17 or 18 in height.

Appears to be the very rare Z grill coil stamp!
Don

Is there a certificate?

No,just the picture,the front is a 12 cent and blurry,it's a worse picture.

E-grill. Not horizontal ridges, so no chance of being a Z-grill IMO.

Assuming that I am counting correctly, the grill has 14 x 17 points. A Z grill should have 14 x 18 points or 13 x 18 with a side ridge (half vertical row).

Z Grills can be 14 X 17 points.

Not that I'm aware of. Can you post a source that states that?


http://www.jamesdire.net/grill.html

The Siegel Cencus

Then you can type in the Scott number of any stamp you want to look up and it show them all with pictures.That's where I got this picture.

1847USA - Stamp Smarter website says so.

Z 85A, 85B, 85C, 85D, 85E, 85F 13-14 x 17-18 Down/horizontal ridges

I am not a grill expert but the grill in the original image looks more like vertical than horizontal ridges which would make it an E grill.

Clark, you may remember this....
A couple of years ago on the experts Forum on VSC there was a big argument between Bill Weiss and Ken Lawrence, where Mr. Lawrence challenged Bill very strongly about a 3c unused 1861 that he had just identified and certified for someone who did not submit it as a Z Grill as a Z Grill. The reason it was being challenged on the Forum was that it was only 17 rows instead of 18 rows. The reason I remember this so vividly is that it was a total urination contest, and got very personal between the 2 of them.

My question is, since a Z Grill is the only grill with horizontal ridges and as long as it is 14 columns, maybe the grill was applied in a way that it was shortened (or 13 columns and shortened). Would PF submit "no opinion" for a stamp showing an obviously unique Z Grill feature just because the grill was a row or column short? If a grill has horizontal ridges, what else could it be?

Thanks, Ray

I recall that debate. In defense of Bill while trying to honor his privacy wishes about the nature of his illness; the fellow was battling a very challenging situation at that time.
Don

I remember it well - very painful for anybody with compassion but also such an important thread. The grill ended up being called a fake, I think by Clark, who personally examined the stamp following the brouhaha.

Possibly a fake. If the 14th row was pressed out, it could be visible in fluid or in a Video Spectral comparator (VSC). A failure to impress the top or bottom row of a Z grill seems unlikely. Based on work by Rich Drews and others, it is likely that the Z grill impression was vertical on the cylinder, while the E grill and other grills were sideways on the grilling cylinder because it would have been rolled sideways across an sheet consisting of two panes of 100 side by side, if the sheets had not already been split into panes of 100). The Z grill roller would have had to roll the grills vertically on the on each pane of stamps.

Also check out the article "The Recognition of Two Major Types of The Z Grill by Jerome S. Wagshal" on page 87 of Opinions IV: Philatelic Expertizing – An Inside View
Edited by Elizabeth C. Pope
Published by The Philatelic Foundation, New York, N.Y., 1987. Here is a link to the publication:
http://www.philatelicfoundation.org...CS-and-B.pdf

At one time the Scott Catalog describe the Z grill as having 13 to 14 by 17 to 18 points. About 15 years ago, after the Wagshal article appeared, the description changed to 13 to 14 by 18 points. (The E grill is described as having 14 by 15 to 17 points.) This may be the reason that some still cling to the notion that a Z grill can be 17 or 18 points high.

Clark

Clark, I think that the paucity of end roller grills, coupled with the fact that they are not known on center gutter straight edge stamps, is pretty clear indication that stamps were only grilled as full sheets and not as panes. Or have I overlooked the existence of a straight edge stamp with end roller grill?

As to the Wagshal article - and a big THANK YOU for pointing to that with a reference for download - I would like to hear your comments on the item illustrated above from Siegel sale 967 (Lot 4190) which was certified as a Z-grill by George Sloan (pre-Wagshal) and sold by Siegel as a Z-grill in 2008 contra the Wagshal recommendation. To my eye it does appear to have horizontal ridges to the grill points, which Jerry had seemed to indicate was the main distinction of the Z-grill roller (or template as he seems to have imagined it). But I only count 17 rows high, with no "half-point" verticals at left and right (hence a "-Z-" grill not a "Z-I" grill).

What do you see, and what do you make of it?

I see the image of the grill. It is too bad that no back images are immediately available for other 85D examples in the Siegel Census. I had the opportunity to examine a different 10 cent grill, submitted as an 85D but I would be surprised if it received a certificate as such. I am a bit troubled by this the 17 point high grill, the way it looks on the stamp and the way the rows of points look. However, I cannot form an opinion without direct examination and comparison with other Z grill examples. It would take a couple of hours of work to compare the image with a reference grill to come to a tentative opinion. It would be much better when comparing scans to scan both stamps with the same scanner at the same time side by side at very high resolution. Since doubts have also been raised about one of the 1 cent 85A Z grills, I will not speculate further.

Does anyone have knowledge of another 17 point high Z grill? I have never seen one.