1851-7 1c Franklin - Plate 6.....?

I thought that there was no plate 6 stamps ever made for the 1c Franklins. Last night I saw quite a few stamps that Ashbrook plated from plate 6 from his photo archives. Was he wrong? Or were these stamps later changed to fit another plate? First I found was in his black binder #1, photo #3. There are others in that first group.

https://www.uspcs.org/resource-cent...ack-binders/

The early scholars thought a Plate 6 was made and that stamps were produced from it because of the existence of a few Type V examples that at the time could not be tied to any other plate. This has since been proven wrong, though I can not provide the specifics. Neinken mentions this in his book (p. 48).

That's correct, Ashbrook was confused for quite some time, about Plate 6. There are no known impressions from it.

edit: glad to see you digging around the society website. There is a lot of raw material there to dig through. The Travers papers are also a goldmine for those doing research on what the PO was really doing, but it takes some digging.

If there was no plate 6, how did Ashbrook get a specific plate position for it? It is one thing to guess a stamp was from plate 6, but to guess it was 67L6? What could he have been using to plate it?

One of my favorite items in my collection is a cover that I bought on eBay 2 years ago with a note written from Ashbrook saying that it is plate 6 type Va. With all the history in discovering that the stamps that he thought were plate 6 were actually plate 5, I thought it was a really nice historical item to own.

Making it even cooler, is that there is a note on back of the cover from Deep Cert, plating the stamp as Plate 8, so it wasn't either Plate 5 or Type Va.

If anyone wants to see it I'll go ahead and scan it and post it later.

Jaxom, the answer to your original question will be found at the beginning of the plate 5 chapter in Neinken's book. They knew that there was a plate five because they had some plate numbers but never had a plate number for any of the stamps that they had identified as plate 6. First a pair was found with both a type V and Va, and later a block of 21 was found from the left side of plate 5, with positions that are an exact match for plated positions from plate 6 so then they knew that both plate 5 and plate 6 were actually from plate 5. Pretty fascinating stuff.

Yep - the fact that the transfer roll dramatically changed appearance in the middle of making the plate is not a normal event.

One can easily see how that could cause him to assume it must be two plates.

ray.mac, I would like to see your Ashbrook cover.

I would also like to see the cover!

Very interesting information. Thanks for sharing.

I would also like to see the cover.

So, should I assume that the plate numbers from all of the Ashbrook photos are not necessarily correct?

Rule #1 of doing research of any kind, is to take note of what others before you have done, but don't blindly believe every bit of it. Always question and re-verify things where appropriate.

Ashbrook was right about a lot of things -- he really was very good, but he made his share of mistakes.

I have a pretty well-known and well-traveled cover, with an Ashbrook plating on the reverse, which is incorrect. He mistakenly wrote down the wrong pane for the stamp, such that it plated to a Ty IIIA, instead of what it is, a Ty II. For decades, I've seen this cover improperly represented at auctions as a result. Its been almost funny -- the last sale sold it to me as a Ty IV #9 no less.

Here is the cover



Couldn't believe that this was a Plate 8 stamp-- best impression I've ever seen, and would be even a great Plate 5 impression if it was Plate 5. Beautiful stamp....

Ray - nice cover. Is that a wrapper or printed matter?

Very nice cover. Although, I am not sure how I feel about writing on a cover other than originally sent. It is really a shame that they did not use date-stamps from the start or before with the year. Still, it is a treasure.

Here's a better image of the stamp and comments that Ashbrook wrote in above it:

Tx- it's a flyer announcing a business partnership.