Standing Helvetia - Unclear Imprints Or Watermarks - Tips On Determing Which Stamp It Is?

I've been trying to decide if a Standing Helvetia I'm interested in, is what the people selling it say it is.
They claim that their stamp is a Scott 97a which would be a white paper stamp, 14 teeth and a Cross in Oval Type II imprint.
It's hard to see an imprint if it is there, and the gum on the back is gone. If I was looking for the crosses water mark that came on the later issues, such as the Scott 110a, would the watermarks still show up if the gum is gone, or if the gum is gone, the watermark would be gone too?
That's essentially the crux of my question. Do watermarks still show up when the gum is gone?
If the answer is yes, the more advanced question would be, how can I determine if this is a 97a vs a 110a?
Thank you
Kurt

Watermarks are produced by creating a variation in the thickness of paper fibre during the wet-paper phase of papermaking. The gum has zero to do with it.

You could tell the difference between a 97a and a 110a from the colour alone. The stamp shown is definitely not a claret stamp.

If you are concerned that the stamp is a 97, ask the seller to show the perf. 12 side along a perforation gauge.

Hope this helps!

No offense intended, but this is fairly deep water to be swimming in if you don't understand watermarks.

and/or peforations? You mention 14 teeth? If you mean 14 perf, I hope that you realize that perfs are best not counted but gauged.

"Perforation gauge
A scale printed or designed on metal, transparent or opaque plastic, cardboard or other material to measure the number of perforation holes or teeth within the space of 2 centimeters."

This is from the glossary found in the upper left of this page.

@wkusau,

You are correct about how to measure the perforations referring to the gauge.

The standing Helvetia is an odd one. Some catalogues do mention the number of teeth on the vertical sides to identify them. The 13 perforation teeth tends to be gauge 11.25, 14 teeth is gauge 11.75. 11 teeth gauge 9.25.

Ooh, looks like I've garnered some opinions with this post. Thank you everyone that has taken the time to respond.
Responding to most of the comments.
1) It's true I may be in deep water. That's why I'm here. I'm sure I'll ask some dumb questions sometimes. It's how I learn, so I'm not afraid to ask, even if it highlights elements of my n00bness.

2) When it comes to the Standing Helvetia series, the perforation gauges don't always serve a person well. I reached out directly to Zumstein about some stamps that were matching a perforation gauge but didn't have the right teeth count (BTW, I use the word teeth because I'm working primarily from German guidebooks which refer to the perforations as the German word for teeth). Zumstein's response was to not focus on perforation gauges but to focus on teeth as sometimes the stamps would stretch when removed from envelopes and they disregard odd perforation sizing, unless trying to distinguish between 11 1/2 x 12 or 11 3/4 which both had 14 teeth.
These are most of the sizes the Standing Helvetia was produced as although.
11 3/4 - 14 teeth
9 1/2 - 9 1/4 - 11 teeth
11 1/2 x 11 - 13 teeth
11 1/2 x 12 - 14 teeth

On top of that mix in the two different imprint types, plus watermarks, plus white or granite paper and as one blogger put it, the Standing Helvetias are a recipe for madness.

3) My understanding has been that Scott 97a is Carmine, not Claret. For the Zum. 1901-1903 E series, my understanding is that Claret is the 1901 Scott 87b.

1903 1 FR carmine Zum. 75E Mi. 70D Scott 97a - White Paper - Cross in Oval II Imprint - 11 1/2:12 - 14 teeth
1905/1906 1 FR carmine Zum. 91C Mi. 79D Scott 110a - White Paper - Cross Watermarks - 11 1/2:12 - 14 teeth

I don't have a Scott catalog and have been mapping my Scott's to Zumstein vs an excellent stamp blog that discusses the Standing Helvetias. Am I assigning the wrong Scott value to to Zum. 75E?

In summary:
Zumstein has 67 varieties of the Standing Helvetia listed in their standard catalog. Some are exceptionally rare, and I have limited expectations of ever finding them. My Lindner album only has spaces for 54 of the 67. It doesn't provide spaces for several of the rare ones (Zum 68A,72F,97B), but also groups the 1891 Zum. C series and 1894 Zum. D series together, which made filling those spaces more achievable and Lindner also skipped some clearly different easy to get versions from 1906 (Zum. 89B,93B) because I guess they deemed them similar enough to others, or by honest mistake which I find from time to time in the album.
In my Lindner album's allocated spaces, I'm only missing two very rare stamps which are from the 1907 run (Zum. 100A, 99B). It turned out not to be too difficult to find affordable mint copies of a lot of the others in the album, so as much as possible within my budget, I've been swapping out my collection for mints, but I'm not real hung up about it. Still hoping to find affordable mints versions in the Zum 66A-72A which I've seen pop up from time to time. I'll have a harder time when I really dig into finishing the Stehende Helvetia section in my dad's stamp album from his youth growing up in Switzerland as it has all the varieties and often accounts for misprints as well.

I'm likely just going to have to ask the seller how they came up with this being a 97a instead of a 110a. Nothing in the photos gives me enough info to see either watermarks or cross in oval imprints. But if anytbody that really knows Standing Helvetias can point out distinctive features from the photo I should be aware of, I'll gladly take those pointers.

Thanks everybody for the feedback.

This series of stamps looks to be very interesting due to all the variations. Linn's published an article on the series in their December 30, 2019 issue. Two interesting points were made:
1. Scott's Classic Specialized categorizes the stamps into 12 different groups, Groups A through L. Each group is defined by "watermark" 182 (Groups A-F), watermark 183 (Groups G-L) and number of teeth (all groups).
2. "Watermark" 182 (Cross in Oval) is not a real watermark but a control mark impressed into the back of the stamp. There are also 2 types of this control mark. Watermark 183 is a real watermark.

Hello Bobby,
Yes, the first "watermark" you mentioned is really one of two control marks and not a true watermark and then later a watermark was used.
Here's a fairly solid rundown of this series - https://www.stamp-collecting-world....tanding.html

As it stands with the images presented, I can't make out an imprint which there would be one if this was truly a 97a but I also can't make out a watermark. I think I'm going to have to ask the seller to show me a lightbox image of the stamp or something since I can't discern which of the two it is, unless someone on this thread really knows of something else that will help discerning the two. I may even already have one of these. Was just looking at my collection again and usually the watermark shows up when the stamp is lit up and sometimes the imprint does too, but sometimes nothing shows up. I think that the instances where nothing shows up is more likely to be the imprint, but am not totally sure. Looking at versions that had to be imprint, not watermark, the imprint doesn't always show up with back-lighting. I hadn't even looked for imprints on those though, since they were produced during the imprint phase only. That's my best guess at this point. My re-review using backlighting of these though did point out two lower value stamps I had bought from an auction long ago that were misidentified as being imprint versions that had instead had watermarks. You all are already helping me get things more straight in my collection. Thank you.

Mentally processing various people's feedback and having re-read the blog on Standing Helvetias, I think I understand.
Actual watermarks are going to show up (gum or not) and should consistently appear.
Control mark imprints may or may not show up, even in watermark fluid.
So a person looking at two very like stamps, like this specific example, can distinguish them simply by determining if there is the Swiss cross watermark or not. Seeing the cross in oval control mark imprint will obviously tell you if it's that, but seeing nothing at all would also indicate that it's prior to the introduction of watermarks.
If I've got any of this wrong, will gladly take additional advice.
Thanks everybody.

Not at all the case and semantics are in play here to some extent.

Whether called a control mark or watermark the end result is identical, with the stage at which the mark is created being the only difference, wet vs dry paper.

Watermarks can be notoriously vexing to see and for some issues wreak havoc on valuation. Thinking of the Washington-Franklin US stamps. To add to it, the ink colors, such as orange, of some stamps make things exponentially more difficult.

Control Mark - Watermark
Tomato - Tomato

The pages you posted look like Lindner T pre-printed pages Those, basically, are the 802602 pages of their Lindner T Blanko range with printed backing pages. This makes it easy to add a 802602 Blank page for those missing stamps. You can draw the black frames and write the info on the backing pages. Alternatively, they have special pages you can print and insert between the backing paper and pockets. Or, if you dare, tear off the pocket, print the backing paper and stick the pockets back. They use double-sided 6 mm. Tessa sticky tape.

Those T Blank pages are also very useful for adding varieties to your collection.

When studying this series of Standing Helvetia throw away your perf gauge. Use this table that comes from the Zumstein catalogue.
First - check the cancel date - this makes it easy to determine the earlier from printings.
Second - count the perf teeth on the side.
Third - check whether the paper is white or with threads.
Fourth - Determine impressed oval or cross watermark.

Return to date on cancel and see if it matches your identification.

This is a slightly outdated table, but will work for nearly all Standing Helvetia.

Remember a stamp with an 1886 cancel cannot possibly be a 1901 printing - the difference between a Sc87 and an 87b. A stamp very often missidentified in eBay sales listings. (This caused by people who insist on using perf gauge and fudging 11 3/4 to perf 12.)

rodgcam - If that's the case I'm back to not be able to determine which of the two stamps it is if I can't make out a control mark or watermark. It sounds though like the control marks often had a light imprint for Swiss stamps in general until they switched to watermarks. Maybe someone on these boards can confirm that. I know the control marks can be ironed out if someone is trying to smooth it out after soaking it off a letter. Not sure if the same would be true of watermarks. I may just have to have an open question if the stamp is the one I think it is, until I find one that is clearly what should be assigned to that slot in my collection.

NSK - Thanks for those tips. I wanted to make a page for my flugpost vorlaufers, so this tip will be a big help. I'll ponder the notion of adding extra boxes to the existing 54 Stehende Helvetia's in my two Lindner pages. I don't think I'd make another page for the C series plus the few others that they don't list. But maybe I'll just completely redo their entire second page and make space for those few instead. Free time is not something I have a lot of, so the Lindner pages made it really easy for me to familiarize myself with all the stamps that I need to eventually finish filling my father's album.

deCoppet - I agree, that page in the Zumstein album is essential. I agree too, I'm constantly amazed how often people will list stamps of a certain date range and completely ignore the fact that there is cancellation right on the stamp prior to the date range that they are listing the stamp as being. I actually have scored some nice finds as a result of those oversights. Cancels make the identification much easier, but since I'm looking for non-cancelled stamps, if it's not possible to distinguish if the stamp has a control mark vs a watermark, then I'm kind of stuck, as noted in my comment to rodgcam above. I'm presuming the plates were the same the whole time (unless a change was specifically noted, like on the 40c Grey) and it was just the paper and control mark/water marks that were changing over most of the life span of the series, so there isn't anything to look for different between paper/perforation/watermark/control mark versions as far as the front of the stamp goes.

I appreciate everyone's feedback and hopefully this thread will be helpful to others in the future.

Plates for recess (intaglio) and surface (typo) printed stamps wore down. Series that ran for many years, typically will have been printed from a range of plates. There may even have been more than one plate in use at any one time.

It rather depends on how the plates were made, whether or not the stamps from different plates are identifiable. If a single die was used to prepare the plates, you may not be able to find differences. When a new is engraved, stamps from plates prepared from the new die may show differences in the image.

Where effectively your assumption may be correct, technically it, likely, is not.

I have found that the control marks are usually pretty easy to spot, although I have yet to steel myself to try to distinguish between the two types. If there is no control mark visible my first thought is that it must be watermarked crosses. The watermarks are less visible on the dry stamps but a soak in water usually makes them clear.