Panama-Pacific Proof On Card? Doesn't Seem Right To Me.

Well were the 12TCs mounted or not is the question needing to be answered here. The one shown by is not. Also the P2a has distinguishing paper.

I will stick my neck out and say the grey mounting material looks quite Roosevelt page color to me but of course paper type is hard to determine with a 2D photo.

For me it is now time for and see where this tread's rabbit hole takes us.

I will take "From Roosevelt Album 1851 Page" for $1,000 Alex.

42P2 is type I. So that is not a problem. The Scott numbering for Roosevelt proofs is inconsistent in that kind of thing. Also, some dies were modified for the Roosevelt album to make them look more like the original.

But to be clear, the stamp in the auction and 42P2 are both type I.
Here is a link to the stamp smarter page that has an image of the full Roosevelt album page and you can see it has the protrusions top and bottom. https://stampsmarter.org/proof/imag...combined.jpg

I remain confident it is a 42P2

Here is what I wrote in the Stamp Smarter write up based on the extensive research I did at the time:

"Reproductions of the eight designs were produced in 1875 with slight differences. The reproductions were not valid for postal use. The Roosevelt album only includes one example of each stamp design. The designs look a lot like the reproductions but with one notable exception. The original design of the 5 cent Jefferson was a tall stamp which made it hard for printers to fit the entire design onto each stamp when perforations were added starting in 1857. Later versions of the design were modified to cut out the protruding top and bottom parts of the design to better fit. This pattern was continued with the later reproductions. The Roosevelt stamp however, returned to the original design including the protrusions. "

I've noticed this before and I believe that there is probably a deficiency in Scott here. These are routinely sold in sets as 40-47P2. As I replied earlier, Die 91, type I was used here. There is no Ty II 42P2 that I am aware of. 12P2 would seem a better fit but I'm not sure of the reason that Scott lists it as it does. I agree it seems wrong or at least odd.

Then it seems you are a good choice to discuss with Scott Editors the need to list the 42P2 as type I and not type II as they currently do.

The Roosevelt Page image may be enough for a change, but they may choose to list it as a 12P2 due to the type I and not type II design.

Yes. One of the reasons I decided to write that article in the first place is because of some confusion in Scott numbers. Scott lists 42P2 as type II which is clearly not correct. But there are a bunch of other "questionable" numberings throughout the album. Part of the problem is that they did a number of unique things in order to produce the proofs. For example, for the "first 1861" page which purports to show the Premiere Gravure stamps, they took the regular issue dies (the only ones available) and modified them by removing some of the outer scroll work and adding in the features that look like the original Premiere Gravure stamps. They did a similar thing with colors between the "first 1861" page of the album and the "last 1861" page. And in some cases the colors don't match the original very well. So, in fairness to Scott, the Roosevelt proofs are in some cases unique designs and don't fit very well into the usual numbering scheme. One issue which bothers me is that in some cases Scott gave two distinct catalog numbers between the two pages and some cases, even though the colors are clearly different, they use just one catalog number for both.

The most outrageous thing the makers of the Roosevelt album did was to try to fake a difference between the 1847 regular issues (Scott 1 and 2) and the reproductions (Scott 3 and 4). They only had the reproduction dies. So they used them for the first set (meant to look like Scott 1 and 2) and then the prevailing wisdom is that they intentionally shifted the dies during printing to make the reproductions look like double transfers. But weirdly, Scott gives both stamps the same catalog number 3P2 and 4P2. They really should have unique catalog numbers, or at least be shown as two varieties of the same catalog number. Maybe 3P2i and 3P2ii or something. Anyway, it was fun doing that research and digging up all those images.

Parcelpost, I would love to do that. I have a list. If you have a suggestion on how to engage with the Scott editors, I'd be interested to try.

There is a good article that cites the dies used for proof printing, which is where I got die 91 from. That is the source material you need. I think it may have been a BIA research paper way back. I'll dig it out again tomorrow and try to provide the reference point, if someone else doesn't beat me to it.

When I first did this research I was able to find a number of good sources. I'm quite sure I read the paper you are referring to.

The stamp smarter article doesn't have die numbers, but it does go into all the cases where original dies were not available. It provides a complete cross-reference from Scott to Roosevelt.

There are some pieces of information that have been lost to history and the best we can do is make inferences.

Very good.

Ronald Burns was the author of that article, and it was an impressive piece of original research on his part.

And so here it is at Siegel and it has a PF cert as 12P2 which does not exist in Scott(this example is undamaged):

https://siegelauctions.com/lot_grd....emailflag=on

I suggest you contact James Lee to see if he has any particular insight or suggestion. Jim does pricing for Scott in the Essay/TC/Proof sections. He could team up do direct you to the best path.

That said, I suggest Jim Kloetzel as your best contact. While he is the editor emeritus, he stays active in correcting the catalog. The current Editor-in-Chief is Jay Bigalke (*** Private information removed by Staff. Please do not post your address/email/phone number etc. ***) and next in line is Donna Houseman (*** Private information removed by Staff. Please do not post your address/email/phone number etc. ***). Amos was recruiting for a managing editor for the Scott Catalogs but I do not know that status.

From my personal knowledge, the Scott listing are not complete. I have a paper variety proof as well as an "unfinished" (as written on the die proof--it is a couple of engraving lines short of complete) large die essay neither of which are included. They are on my to-do list.


Edit: Oops, I did not consider the business emails as private. https://www.linns.com/contact-us/ed...ial-contacts will provide the contacts for Scott Catalog editors. If that link is wiped, then just Google, "Linns editorial contacts" for a list.

Third comment down in this thread:

Yes, and Bill Langs did similar non-Scott cat numbers for Roosevelt proofs. I bought a couple from him in the past. He had a huge hoard of Roosevelt proofs. But because the Scott numbering is so wonky people would use numberings they felt made more sense. I'm a bit surprised at the PF, but it does make sense.

If you read the section of the stamp smarter article on the 1861 issues you'll see a whole mess of questionable calls. Maybe the oddest is that there are 5 Scott numbers for the 3c Washington stamps even though there are only 3 variations of the 3c stamp in the Roosevelt Album.

I will drop an email to James and see what his thoughts are on approaching Scott to try to argue for some modifications.

RLSNY - Best of luck in trying to get some clarity and logic injected into this issue. Hard to believe that James has not tried before but you never know.