To Good To Be True?

I see this #296 on ebay with one bid at 6 bucks. I think instantly there must be something wrong with it. I look it over and see nothing. I put the winning bid in at 7.49. Now I am looking again and still do not see anything wrong with it. The back has OG. You would think a stamp like this with a Cat value of $70 would fetch a better price then 7.49. I am not complaining at this rate I can get the 3 I am missing from these series for 30 bucks. I fixed it. Sorry I had my 298 back and my 296 back mixed up

The "white" area surrounding the hinge remnant - could that be thinning?

My eyes must be bothering me. Those pictures don't look like the front and back of the same stamp.

Sure it is; on the view of the back, the short (bent) perf at UR matches the short perf at the LR corner of the front view.

Dmilkman So who pays full price ? The amount of U.S.classic stamps is not going to dry up ! I only collect what U.S. comes along...but here is a #298 no gum, thins on back and a small flaw above the eight cents..a $120 dollar stamp for less than 5 percent of cat !

i took the 298 out of its mount to give a slightly better picture..you can see scruffing above the "eight cents" . So whatever works for you..if you like the one thats on auction.go for it !

I share your opinion.

I agree with rod and partime that the two images must be of different stamps. To make sure I imported them both into an image editing app and overlaid one image as a transparent mirrored layer over the other. For one, the images are completely different in both size and proportion but to me, the real proof is the tell-tale perf on the UR of the reverse image - it shows a thin rectangular sized piece of paper pointing north junctioning with a very short, almost absent perf pointing east/west -- which is not visible at any corner of the image side of the stamp.

Also, back to the point - though I haven't checked ebay prices on this series of stamp lately, I think 1/10th cat price would be a good buy for the front image of the stamp although I think the centering of the black center image of this issue comes into play when pricing almost as much as the overall centering of the outer vignette.

The first or second perf tip upper right hand side is clearly longer than the rest, but it is not present on the scan of the Gum side. I don't think it's the same stamp either.

Yep! I agree as well.

The bottom 2 corner perfs are so different it is off this planet.

I guess my eyes weren't so bad after all. I was trying to figure out whether the stamp was flipped vertically or horizontally, and couldn't figure it out. Anyway, I would think that $7.49 was a great price for that stamp!

What is the appropriate flip? I would think vertically (flipping it over from side-to-side, not top-to-bottom).

The back pick is from the 8 cent value (298)

Easy way to tell that Russ is correct. I right-click and save-as, and the back image name is 20121226_298back_opt1.jpg, implying that it is 298, not Scott 296. Did milkman get some scans mixed up?

Russ, you are a genius! :)

Very interesting thread here .. even though I have nothing to do with any of this - thanks for all the analysis!!

Wow that is the first time I did that, how embarrassing. I was actually just checking the Forum'sbility to spot monkey business,it passed. I have I 298 with a scan of back I posted it instead of the 296. 298-296 I was close. I would have fixed it sooner but was not online yesterday. Thanks for the comments, I agree with centerstage it made for an interesting thread anyway.