A Question About Plating Guides

...sigh...I've come to that point that I'm sure all newbie collectors come to when we realize there is SO much more to this stamp identification thing than we originally thought! I have come across many GB stamps that have a multitude of plates listed and I need to find a good guide for doing so. I know there are individual guides for specific stamps but is there something for a wider range of stamps? Does that even make sense?

I want a guide that can give me plate info on more than just Penny Reds or 2p blues! Thanks in advance!

Here is one option - I recommend it!
http://www.squidoo.com/10000-hour-rule

What? Was that the right link???

Anyone else?

All depends on what you're looking to plate. The reason that People study the plating of Penny Reds is because so many different plates were used.
Specialist books are available for many Stamps in which multiple plates were used but some don't come cheap. I'm beginning the study of the US 1¢ Franklins and that book cost me $200.00.

lindseyr702,

Could you be a touch more specific wrt what you want to plate.

If you wanted to just plate penny blacks, the scans of the Nissen plates on the Spink website are good enough and would totally work to plate those.

If you wanted to just plate the tupence blue, then Mike Jackson's book is what you'd want.

If you wanted to plate the penny reds, alph I & II, dies I & II, imperf and pert, then you might want to take deep breathe and make sure that is what you really want to do.

There are two main methods to plate penny reds, one via detailed measurements of the check letters and the other by reference to the eyeballed positioning of the check letters as compared to scans of the imprimatures. Neither approach is trivial and would require a reasonable amount of commitment and funds to acquire the books or CDs.

Just let me know I then I could hopefully point you in the right direction.

Lastly, if you have a odd stamp you want plated, if you sent me a scan I would be happy to take a crack at it.

-Larry

lindseyr702, there may come a time when the internet becomes a one-stop resource for any plating needs. That time has not yet come.

Lots of information is hidden away in the specialist literature, and much of that is expensive to acquire. Over time, more and more of it will get digitized, but even then, the sheer amount of it is overwhelming.

If you don't have Stanley Gibbons Great Britain Specialised Stamp Catalogue Volume 1: Queen Victoria, pick up a copy of that for starters. They are not hard to find in good used condition. You can build from there.

It is neat that you want to dive right in to plating, but if you're not careful, you'll be spending all your money on literature and eyeglasses. (That's not a wink...Smiley is squinting...he plates Penny Reds.)



(That one was a wink.)

@stallzer - holy buckets! That's a lotta dough for one book!

Larry - Right now I'm looking at a couple of Scott #58s. Unfortunately, I don't own any blacks yet! I am interested in 2p blues but I don't own enough of them to justify the purchase of a book just for them! While I am somewhat interested in plating my penny reds, I have a massive amount of stamps right now that need identifying so I think I will wait to make sure I'm ready for that commitment! While I genuinely appreciate your offer of help identifying a stamp, for some reason that identification process is what I love most! When I see collections for sale where the stamps are all identified and mounted, it holds no interest for me at all - I love the idea of a messy pile of stamps where you never know what you will find, lol!

@Cjd - I realized long ago that the internet is no place to do real research - ha! I've slowly been accumulating the resources I need to identify my stamps. Even if I could find the information online, I find that doing things that way is very cumbersome and just plain awful! I have digital version of some of my Scott cats on my iPad and I really like them that way so I was thinking of picking up the Stanley Gibbons Great Britain Specialised Stamp Catalogue Volume 1: Queen Victoria for the iPad as well but it is $50! I may look for an older version on ebay rather than shelling out $50 for the digital... While the prospect of plating penny reds is certainly an exciting prospect for me, I think I will identify all of my other hundreds of stamps first!

lindseyr702,

It might seem labor intensive, but I would suggest that when you are working with penny reds, to examine them, don't use a glass, scan them at 800 dpi. It is much easier to see things, like the Williams lines, on your monitor than through a glass.

The decision tree to determine what you've got is really just-imperf or perf, die I or die II, and then which alphabet and eventually small/large crown, white paper or blued. Draw a decision tree and the task will become simpler.

-Larry