Scott 613 I Just Hit The Jackpot

I have one and I am excited! Went to an antique flea market and bought a box full of vintage postcards and stamps and I loved the art in the stamps so I bought it for …,! Anyway I started to buy albums and just collected for over the past few years and started to read and read more on stamps lately and I was told that the scott 613 was valuable and I bought a special measuring stamp tool and it measured 22.25 I was like wow ! I am excited and now I don't know what to do with it. What should I do?

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

Welcome.
Please note that it is extremely unlikely that you found a 613; it is one of the most mis-identified US stamps. Please read this page (towards bottom) for more information
https://stampsmarter.org/1847usa/ByYear/1923.html
You can also search this forum for 613 and read the other threads on this rare stamp.

If desired, you can scan and post an image in this thread and the experienced folks here can you if it is worth the cost of a certification. (Without a certification, a real 613 would never realize what it is worth without one.)
Don

Trigger Warning

Take a deep breath and stop measuring the design. Also, accept the fact that it is beyond extremely unlikely that you have a 613. This forum's archives are packed full of eerily similar posts that all ended with the stamp not being 613. The Philatelic Foundation archives have legions of results where the submitter was sure they had a 613 but did not.

The trouble spot always seems to be the design measurements. Publishing them seems to really trigger false hopes and treasure hunting.

Give us some good quality images and we can no doubt put this to bed.

You should realize you don't have a 613.

You should turn the stamp over and see whether there are any ink spots on the reverse. If there are, it is not a 613. If there aren't, it is still HIGHLY unlikely that it is a 613.

Allow me to summarize: years ago you bough a random pack of stuff at a flea market, and eventually took up philately as a hobby, to a degree. Then along the way, "someone" of unknown identity and expertise, told you that one of the stamps, presumably still on cover, was a 613. You then bought a "special measuring stamp tool" of unknown name, type, or accuracy. You then measured the design, presumably correctly, but not also the perforation. You are now certain you have one of the great rarities of American philately.
What to do? First, upload good, clear scans of the front (and back), and this community will either disabuse you of your belief and show you why it isn't a 613, or we'll be able to offer some level of hope that perhaps it is. Then, depending on the results and your reaction to them, submit the stamp to PSE, PF, APEX, or PSAG (opinions will vary here and in general about which is best), because without such a certification, your opinion about what you believe you have is meaningless, and the stamp is nothing. Even with the cert, there will be skeptics.

Betty, your post is vague on a number of points. One of those is whether your stamp is loose on on a piece of mail.

While posting a hi-resolution scan of both sides against a contrasting background is desirable to get meaningful replies here, under no circumstances should you remove the stamp from a card or envelope to scan the back side.

(Virtually every stamp is worth more on it's full mail piece as "postal history" than soaked off. And the Harding stamp can be definitively ID'd from only the front by knowledgeable collectors.)

And said by others, the odds are extreeeeemely long as there are two look-alike Hardings of nominal value.

Hi,

Welcome Betty, I think you will come to find this community to be one of your "best ever" resources.

As an up and coming "long time novice", I have learned to always assume my interesting stamp is worth about 3 mills and let others prove me wrong. The satisfaction of finding out that my "unique" stamp catalogs at (or even better, can easily be sold for) a dollar or two after finding it deep within a "kiloware hoard" of roughly 10,000 purchased on eBay for $30.00 (give or take) is deeply rewarding even if Elon Musk doesn't "have my back".

After consulting my umpteenth crystal ball (I have often eaten ground glass ) I can safely say that I see a "perforation gauge" in your future. Instead of spending $4.95 on a metal gauge, blow $10.95 on a Stanley Gibbons plastic "Instanta" sliding type gauge. It will become your best inert friend.

Best of luck,

Greg

How come a test print, that if I understand correctly wasn't meant to be a real postage stamp, became so valuable?
In stampworld there are 10 sellers of this stamp, though it is clear that some of these deals are not 613.

It is a real postage stamp. It was discovered in the wild after being sold by the post office to be used as postage.

Your premise is incorrect. 613 was created when a sheet of the rotary press stamps (612) was fed through the flat plate (Gauge 11) perforator. Nothing to do with test prints or essays or anything like that.

I had limited sources of information.
One site defined this stamp as a test print. Scott notes that this stamp "was produced from rotary press sheet waste". I assumed, maybe erroneously, that sheet-waste produced stamps are not the usual source of legal postal stamps.


Does the high value come because of the above error, like the inverted Jenny?

What site was it?

A Voldemort site.

I suggest you go out and buy a new 2023 Corvette, You've earned it !

I cannot help thinking there is something fishy about the original posting.