Expert's Opinions Wanted - Scott O96

I pulled this out of a lot I received today. I expected, when I held it up to a strong light to see a very transparent paper, expecting this to be Scott O15.

Instead, it is the typical mottled soft paper you commonly see with the soft paper printings, especially Scott 207.

I flipped it over to look at the reverse and someone had written in pencil O96, which is the soft paper variety. When I looked it up in the Scott Specialized, its a $400.00 stamp.

Here's the stamp. Please feel free to offer any and all opinions on whether you think this is what I think it is. The images are at 1200 dpi, adjusted by the optimizer for size.





*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

It appears to have soft paper perfs.

Thanks, Bart. I thought so too, but didn't want to influence what someone else might say.

It has all of the appeances of a soft paper stamp.

The Officials exist on several paper types. The clearly hard Continental type similar to Scott 156-166, the clearly soft American type similar to Scott 182-191 and an intermediate paper which looks something like a soft paper. The latter is the problem. It is difficult to tell from a scan, but I am not sure that is a soft paper printing. Shade looks closer to hard paper and the sharpness of the impression looks closer to hard paper. This may be an intermediate paper. Most expertizing services attribute the intermediate paper to the cheaper variety. In this case an intermediate paper would mean an expertizing service might identify your stamp as a Scott O15 which catalogues $10 as a used stamp as opposed to a Scott O96 which catalogues $400 as a used stamp.

Stampman, that is a great scan. Do you mind sharing what type scanner you use?

wtcrowe, thanks for the analysis. The clarity of the impression was the one problem I was having with the stamp. It just wasn't "fuzzy" enough in the details for what I expected a soft paper to look like.

I was not aware of the intermediate paper type for the officials, so that helped explain it.

The posting by littleriverphil is great to show the types of paper as seen with lighting at the back. How did you do that so I can provide that type of scan for everyone to see what I'm seeing?

Cut the stamp image sized rectangle out of a 102 card, centered the stamp in the "view port" and placed the card over a light, took a photo.

I would not be focused as much on color or the apparent quality of the impression, which doesn't strike me as that great but rather, the look of the paper. That fine horizontal ribbing should be a dead giveaway that it is a soft paper stamp.

yes, the paper and the perforation looks like soft paper.
but what about paper thickness here? just as an additional indicator.

The paper, when compared with other officials which are only hard paper, is thicker and very ... limp... is about the best term I can think of. While the hard paper stamps are stiff when lightly brushed with a fingertip, this one is completely different.

I tried to duplicate the light behind image but haven't been able to get is so far.

I agree that it looks thicker, but have no way to measure them. I also think it "flicks" like soft paper, as Stampman said, limper.


Getting the photo may take a tripod. I used a flashlight and several books to bring the light and card up into focal range.