Help With Identifying Info About 3 Cent Washington 1930-S Stamp

I recently found a 3 cent George Washington stamp from the 1930s in a stamp book, but I've been finding a lot of different information on its value. Some places list it as being worth a couple bucks, while others are selling it for a few hundred. If anyone could help me find out more about it that would be appreciated!

Stamps may have different watermarks, perforations, and / or have been printed by different techniques. Where one combination may have little value, another may be very expensive. And sometimes none of the variations holds much value.

Where did you find information this stamp would be worth more than a handful of cents?

Edit:
Keep in mind that there are hopefuls (if not outright frauds) on ebay, and even more so on Etsy, that try to sell stamps that have little money for astronomical amounts. If you search this forum for 'jujustamps', you will get an impression of how careful you should be with taking ask prices on ebay for realistic.

Interesting. I doubted that this one was worth much since seemingly most aren't, but I was curious since there are some listings online (mostly ebay) that have them set for hundreds of dollars. I doubt I would've sold it anyway since it's from my grandmothers old collection. Thanks for the information.

Edit: Ah, that makes sense. I suspected that that's what it was, but it wasn't totally sure.

You should look for those lots on ebay more carefully. On German ebay, pretty much every "rare" US stamp with a face on it "sells" for hundreds if not thousands of $. "Rare" is the most abused word on any ebay.

Of course, none of those stamps have ever sold. While some offers are frauds (mostly the parade of wannabe 594 and 596), most sellers simply are clueless about stamps.

Your 3c Washington, by the way, is a very common stamp worth close to nothing.

Look at the sold listings of that stamp on ebay and you will see what is is really worth. In this case you wont find any listed unless in plate block or a full sheet format.

Fortunately, for ease of identification, your stamp is simple to identify because there are no watermarks, no complicated perforation rate differences, and all are printed by the same method.

This issue came in sheets, booklets and coils. The booklets are coils are easily differentiated by the straight edge arrangements. (Yes, the coils were perforated at a different rate before any yahoo corrects me, but they are visually diferent with their edges.) Your stamp being perforated on all four sides, can only be Scott 720, without any need for closer study.

As for commonness, here are approxmately 1600 used copies from one of my junk boxes - identical to yours. These *might* be worth the cost of postage to ship them to a specialist looking for oscurce plate varieties, but barely.


The U.S. being a large and literate country, it produced most of her stamps in large quantities. Those stamps paying the basic single letter and postcard rates were often printed in the billions, yes, with a B. Yes, there are rarities, but they are just that, rare.