Help Identifying Imperf Washington-Franklin

Excellent advice. I might add that it is not even so much about identifying less common varieties but identifying the basic issues correctly in the first place. Kind of THE fundamental of stamp collecting. What do I have?

The four for studying W/F are "The Expert's Book" and "How to Detect Damaged, Altered, and Repaired Stamps" both by Paul W. Schmid, Volume one of United States Postage Stamps of the 20th Century by Johl, and the Micarelli book mentioned above.

Rev, IMO, even better than the Schmid book, is Martin A. Armstrong's "Washington Franklins 1908-21".

Either will give the student what they need to know, however IMO, Armstrong's book is laid out so well, it almost reads like a novel. You can actually read this book, and it offers a couple of unanswered questions (6c coil that was printed, but has never been found). This book is also out of print, and very difficult to find.

Hope this helps, Ray

One way to address this issue is to amend the forum rules to ask users to use "Id Service:" at the start of the topic subject line when they want a free ID and don't want to learn or hear about identification resources. Many of these threads go sideways because the OP just wants a free ID. Other users would be free to answer, or not, and read, or not, and there would be no guessing about the scope of the thread.

ray.mac- Yes, that is very good as well.

So, to the original question, what is it, we await watermark confirmation.

This website has been very helpful for me! It also has identification for other stamps if you go to the Home page.
https://www.theswedishtiger.com/imp...-stamps.html

This is good stuff. I to have had my problem in identifying Washington/ Frankland stamps. The small differences in types make you have to thing and investigate referring to reference books. I think it is the hardest set to make and complete of any US Stamps.

I've been a Washington/Franklin collector for around 25 years. It gets easier over time but you do need good reference sources and some good reference copies to really learn them. I agree with rogdcam, by appearance its most likely 482.

Rogdcam, apologies as I just saw your post awaiting watermark confirmation. As I stated in an earlier response, it is unwatermarked. Thanks to you and Al E. Gator for identifying it as a 482. I appreciate both of you for taking the time to figure this out!

I agree with the conclusions of this thread. The pair was going to be either 409 or 482 depending on the watermark testing.

On a tangent to identifying the other types, and as opposed to buying the literature, which some consider pricey, or is challenging to locate, here is a example lot currently on ebay, which would provide an ID'd set of the offset printings to use as a reference guide. And it's almost always better to use actual stamps for comparisons than the illustrations in the catalogs.

The link to the listing is:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/225589289520