Scott 318 Identifying Fakes.

Hello All
Other than no recorded sales, how can I determine this is not Scott 318?

Thanks

Evidence of perforations at the base?

- Top margin is not cut straight.
- The stamp does not have a certificate.
- No genuine used copies of #318 are known.
- Plentiful copies of used #300 exist with perfs trimmed to resemble 318, 316, and even 314.
- Multiple other threads on SCF ask a similar question and get a similar answer.
- Better chance of getting struck by lightning than this being a real 318.
- If you still don't believe us, feel free to send it in for a certificate. If the measurements are right, they would use high powered magnification to look at the edges and determine if they were cut by scissors, paper cutter, xacto knife, guillotine, etc., or if it has a chance at being a real coil. There is a lot of material available on detecting fake Washington/Franklin coils. Some, but not all, of those techniques can apply to this series as well if you want to start your education there.

Anyone with any real experience in this area would take one look at the top margin and know it's no good, for some of the reasons given above.

i agree......obvious fake for reasons given.

I must be a curmudgeon here.
Most of the "reasons" cited by ZebraMan above are broad generalities and should be dismissed as not relevant to this specific stamp.
The lack of a certificate means nothing. Every stamp starts that way.
Lack of genuine used copies means nothing. There is always a first.
Plentiful copies of #300.... yes, there are plentiful copies of cheap look-alikes for many other rarities.
Other threads on similar topic .... means nothing to this stamp.
lightning .. no relevance.

Instead one should look at the specific characteristics of THIS stamp and judge it on its own merits.
Specifically, the two straight edges are the most critical feature as mentioned above. I note this is a photograph through a mount rather than a scan, so the image is slightly tilted. This makes it more difficult to evaluate the straightness and parallelness of the cuts, but I agree they do not look straight and would also have to conclude this particular stamp is a trimmed #300.

Add: A scan would be useful to more easily show the edges.

The top is cut pretty straight. The curved line below it makes it look not straight. I think it's the bottom margin. That one sits straight but it looks like there are small grooves when I zoom it in and it doesn't look entirely parralel to the top one. Could these grooves be from perforations? Maybe I should take my perf tool to it?

Agree that this is a tough one to tell from the picture provided. The photo isn't straight, and is through a mount, we are not seeing the true story. The three red lines in the picture below were parallel using my software. Looks a bit odd, don't they?

I'll have to disagree with John here (although I understand his point).

I think the other posters were trying to help imodius with IDing his stamp. As we have helped imodius in some of his past threads, (i.e. 5/29/19 when he asked about having a Scott 596, his 7/8/19 thread asking about having a Scott 267c, his 1/24/2022 thread asking about another Scott 596), it is best to start the identification process with the assumption that the stamp in front of you is the most common variety and then see if you can build a case for the rarity.

John is correct, just because there are no known used copies of #318 does not mean that this might be the first. And while he has a point when he said "Instead one should look at the specific characteristics of THIS stamp and judge it on its own merits." I choose to look at the context of this thread, the posting history of the entire community, and hope the take-away for the majority of folks reading it is that if you hear the sound of hooves coming towards you, you can safely assume that it is not a herd of unicorns. Assume that you do not have a one-of-a-kind or incredibly rare stamp as you go through your ID process, this will not only limit confirmation bias but also help you avoid constant disappointment.

As you may have read in other places in this community, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. As others have mentioned, the top of the stamp is not cut straight at all, not even close. You posted above "The curved line below it makes it look not straight…" but look at your image with two identical straight line overlaid on it as shown below.

Don

Edit: oops Partime beat me to it...
Any image distortion would not be so great between the top cut edge of stamp and top edge of the design. I cannot buy into that much distortion in a few millimeters without other signs in the image.

Is see little point in debating this for numerous thread pages, if imodius believes he has something special he should send it in for an expert opinion and then let us know the results.

I agree with John Becker.

Maybe the question to be answered is whether this was a picture or a scan. If it is a picture taken at an angle from the righthand side of the stamp, the skew in the picture makes all these straight parallel lines redundant.

The suggested skew in the printed area of Partime's picture suggests this was a picture taken at an angle.

If it is a picture, there may also be some curling at the top.

I do not think it matters, for there to be this much image distortion (curved top) there would have to be a huge crease or something affecting just this area and not as much as the rest of the stamp? (I agree that the stamp image is crooked, but the top-to-bottom tilt/distortion is not the same.)

Don

The postmark alone would likely disqualify it as being a 318. The 318 was only issued in small quantities in five cities and I know that Brockton and the area around it including Boston was not one of those cities. I am trying to locate the reference that backs up my memory. Could someone have purchased the stamp in Chicago and used it in Brockton? Possible but unlikely.

The non-issued city would only lengthen the odds, but would not be disqualifying.

In this case, there is a wavy line machine cancel, which I suspect is the origin postmark. The Brockton, Mass cancel has all the "city, state", wording at the top, so very likely to have "recd" at the bottom, similar to this image borrowed from ebay, which has a slightly different letter-setting, but the point remaining the same:

Sometimes these treads would be more simple if the question was, "What do I need to ignore, overlook or explain away to have a jackpot with this stamp."

My suggestion of send it in for a certificate means that most likely the owner will have to pay money to be told it is not as hoped and as such, this seems to be ignored just about as often as some critical piece of information, "need to ignore, overlook or explain away to have a jackpot."

Here what has been ignored is the use of a real straight edge, rather than eye balls. The threat to pull out the perf gauge for, "Could these grooves be from perforations? Maybe I should take my perf tool to it?" should not need to be asked. A perf tool usually has one or more straight edges and would do wonders showing how not straight the top is.

I think before discussing this stamp (and many similarly mutilated sheet stamps on ebay), we should ask for a SCAN of it, not a "cellphone hip-shot" picture - it shows the typical lens distortions that make the picture unusable for discussion.

(But the chances this is "a rare one" are exactly 0).