Any Info On A Scotts US 65 Imperf On Left

Came across this

Scotts US 65

with an Imperf at left

Is this a common cut ?

It's called a straddle margin. It happened when panes were cut. It makes the stamp less desirable for a lot of collectors but I happen to like straddle panes.

Actually common on these.

IIRC I paid $8-$10 for this one

Here is a Scott 100 straddle margin copy that I owned and Rupp sold for me. He sold hundreds of stamps in a one year period but this one took two years because of the straddle margin. People just don't want them even though the margins are "jumbo". Slap some perfs on and you have a stamp worth five times as much that people compete for.

It's probably a straddle, but its missing some perforations.

The reason a straddle pane example is called that has to do with a feature in the way the two panes on a full sheet were perforated. Typically no perforations were run down the center of the sheet to separate the right and left panes from one another. Arrows at the top or bottom (pointing down or up respectively) are often seen and make for a more desirable straddle example. But apart from the center gutter, the rest of the sheet has lines of perforation. (see the 30c above)

Your example shows no vertical perforation at all. This raises the question: did it originally have a column of perforations that were privately removed (i.e. cut off), or was it never perforated vertically at all, or did it missperf near the straddle margin stamp, or.... More to the point here; which side is the properly imperforate center gutter, and which is the (improper) adjacent side that should show perforations? Why is it imperforate vertically on both sides?

The difficulty in resolving this problem is one of the reasons many people avoid authentic straddle pane items altogether. They are easily faked and can easily be altered to resemble an imperforate single that will entangle the uninformed.

Your example appears at this magnification to have a natural straight edge on the right, and appears altered on the lft side with the removal of perfs. But don't ask me to judge whether this is a candidate for a single from a sheet imperf vertically. For the last, I wouldn't touch it without a cert (unless we agreed it has had some perfs trimmed off).