Germany 1889 - Case Of A Double Impression?

This is Germany Mi. Nr. 47 (1889). I'm wondering whether the left frame is a double impression.



Top part of the left frame:



Bottom part:



What do people think???

This looks like a kiss (or chatter or jump) print, rather than a double impression. A double impression in a typographed/letterpress printed stamp should show overall doubling, like this:

tonymacg, I'm confused about this subject because I've seen items listed as double impressions on various auctions sites, items in which the double impression is confined to only a portion of the printed area.

Is this incorrect?

jimjamtwo, could you be confusing double impressions with re-entries?
I'm not too clear on how to spot a reentry, but I got this definition from re-entries.com

A re-entry is a constant plate variety occurring only on steel engraved stamps that shows portions of the design doubled or even tripled, one over the other. It occurs in the same position on every sheet printed from the plate on which the re-entry occurs. It was usually the result of the steel transfer roll being impressed more than once in approximately the same position on the plate from which the stamps were printed. This was done when the soft plates started to show wear after continuous usage. The unhardened steel plates were re-entered under the transfer roll to strengthen the weakened areas in the designs. Some plates, out of necessity, were re-entered more than once, resulting in several 'states.' The original single steel plate for Scott #15, the 5¢ Beaver, for example, was re-entered ten times over its lifetime resulting in eleven different states. During the re-entering process, should the transfer roll not be aligned or registered precisely with the original entry, doubling of the design, or parts of it, will occur.

A second type of re-entry resulted when a faulty image on the plate was removed by hammering the plate from the back and burnishing the faulty impression off the surface (usually with charcoal) before rocking or rolling in the design in the correct position. In this process it sometimes happened that traces of the original impression remained and were reproduced in the printing. This is called a 'fresh entry.'

Perhaps that is what you have.

Many of these listings may indeed by wishful thinking. A double impression of the printing plate should produce a double impression of the stamp.

You can get partial doubling in a number of ways. The sheet of paper may be flapped back against the plate as it's being removed; the plate may 'chatter' as it's being applied to the paper (or vice versa); the paper might shift ever so slightly under the plate - and you can probably imagine other scenarios.

I'm not sure how other catalogues deal with this sort of thing, but Gibbons confines its listings of 'double prints' to true double impressions of the whole plate. Here's another example, from an old-fashioned lithographic stone



(There's probably a German connection here. In the early days, almost all the lithographic stone was quarried in Germany.)

There are other possibilities of course for your stamp. It could be an example of a reentry. It could be an example of what Australian George V collectors call a 'compartment line'. I'm right out of my depth in Germany, so I won't comment further on those possibilities.

@jamesw, you're probably right, I'm probably thinking of re-entries.

@tonymacg, although it's probably true that you're not an authority on German stamps, I would have thought that this was a basic printing error of the sort that could occur anywhere. Don't you think?

You're quite right, jimjamtwo: I was just covering my back, in case this was a phenomenon peculiar to these stamps and well-known to German collectors

We all hope to make that one big find of a rarity. However, rarities are rare because they're rare: as a general rule, a collector will be lucky to make one such find in a lifetime of collecting. That doesn't stop us all from hoping, though - and that's why there are so many 'double prints' on offer out there.

We general collectors can be excused for a little wishful thinking. However, I get very annoyed when reasonably-sized dealers make stupid wishful-thinking blunders. (And I get extremely annoyed when the blunder is pointed out to the dealer, and the dealer persists in offering the wrongly described item. This is happening at the moment with a stamp of Bussahir on ebay.)

A double impression is as Tony has described,
On a typographed stamp, you cannot get a "re entry"
so your example suggests a "chatter print"
or an excess or thick printing ink in the frame area.
I would not classify it as an error, just an occurence.