Norway Vintage Posthorns - Colour Variations

I've found two interesting colour variations among the Norwegian posthorns issued in 1886/93. The first one is the 5 ore grey green, but to the naked eye my copy looks absolutely grey. Is there a grey listed variety for this stamp?



There is also a 10 ore red, but this one has a very intense colour and is more scarlet:



All assistance greatly appreciated!

Hi jimjamtwo,

Do you have any more copies of the 5ore to compare this one with? This colour looks ok to me

Only stamps from the first plate were issued in time for the 1886 postmark and that plate only has the one shade, grey-green, listed in either Norgeskatalogen or Facit.

I want that 10 ore. Kristiania was the first tram established in Oslo in 1874, Looks like you might have a tram stamp.

I think my biorhythm was low when I posted this.

(1) nigelc, the scan makes the stamp look slightly greenish. I don't know why. To the naked eye, it's absolutely grey and not the least bit green. You'd be very surprised if you were looking at it and someone told you it was 'grey green.'

I find scans often make significant changes to a stamp's colour. This is annoying, but I don't know what can be done about it. (This makes me wonder whether scanners are meant to be calibrated somehow.)

(2) smauggie, what's a tram stamp???

Is that a Bypost cancel (Byp) on the first stamp?

Smauggie: I know that is a "bridge" type cancel on the second stamp, but how can you identify it as a tram postmark?

Yes, it is, Battlestamps. Not that I actually know what that means!

You can go to a photography shop and pick up an "18% gray" card, used to calibrate color, and include it on the scanner bed when color is important.

If you cut it exactly 2cm long, you can do a little algebra with your scans to count perfs.

Cjd, thanks for the tip.

This sounds easy as pie - I thought I would have to jig around with the scanner settings to fix the problem.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I understand it, Bypost was a form of local or private mail that was used in Norway and a few other countries like Denmark. A few of the private carriers even had their own stamps, but most were gone by the 1910's.
Will

Kristiania was just the old name for Oslo. It wouldn't be known as Oslo for another 30 or so years. Is there something about the cancel that suggests it is special?

SHADE ANALYSIS ...

https://stampsmarter.org/features/C...Extract.html

this is the olive"ish" grey green shade, quite normal.

the cancel is most likely a CHRA BYP one ring cancel. it's not that common on this issue.

a guess would be that the cancel is used on letters with local rate postage within Christinia

So, I tried Stampsmarter's Shade Analysis. Nice breakdown of my stamp's colors. But do the associated color codes have names, or just numbers? Couldn't find any correlation of codes and color names during my quick look through the site.

A bit of reading on the site reveals that Shade Analysis uses HTML Color Codes. Searching online sent me to https://www.computerhope.com/htmcolor.htm where you can see charts that provide names for all HTML color codes. If your code isn't listed, try clicking on the "HTML Color Picker" in the Tip at the top of the chart. You'll get to a site that allows you to type in your color code and get, if not a name, at least an image of the color via the associated YUI Color picker. You can use this function to compare two codes/colors as well.

5 ore stamp is Plate I grey-green (issued about 1887) paying the local mail rate in Christiania. The 10 ore stamp is Plate IV (issued Oct 1890) red in shade. Both the 20 mm small die issue of 1886-1893, printed by Central Printing Works. So NK 52 I (maybe type 4) and NK 53 IV (type 2) from what I can see. Both common issues.