What Is The Difference Between Scott C58 & C63 ?

I don't collect anything after 1945 but decided to take my US Airmails into the 1960's. Scott C58 and C63 show 2 illustrations in the catalog
AP39 & Ap41 but they look identical to me.

They are both listed as Perf 11, Both Giori Press printings, both came from 200 Subject plates. So how does one tell ?

Check the Orange box around lady liberty. It is not on C63.

Thank you Sir. For the life of me I stared at it again and again looking for the difference and never noticed that.

Yes, I wish Scott was a little more explicit in these things. Usually, they just have a comment, "Compare with design Axxx". Why don't they just say, "Compare with the border on design Axxx"? Annoying!

An interesting side note: Does anyone have further information as to why the C63 redesign was issued? According to various auction sales for the stamps the following explanation is provided:




Is there any further information out there on the subject? I guess such printing problems may have been typical of technologies in use the late 1950s/early 1960s, few of which we encounter today.

Could someone put images up for the less fortunate?

Here are a couple of used examples from my stockbook as an illustration of the two varieties (note the one on the left (C58) has the orange border all around; the one on the right (C63) does not:

The design of other values of the set (C57, C59, C62) look like C63, the C58 design was an anomaly.

All the Postal Bulletin had to say about the re-issue was that it "included a vertical gutter between the pictorial portion and the value tablet to aid in the printing on the Giori presses."

True, but they don't like to admit mistakes.
This is the same BEP that never admitted to making an error on the RE196a wine stamp by spelling "dollar" with 3 L's. When originally asked about it, they said "We don't make mistakes, it must be a counterfeit". Turned out to be 39 positions out of 200.
I think someone pointed out the design difference between C58 and the other two, and they used this opportunity to correct it and used the printing issue as an excuse.

Excuses, Excuses!

Until you mentioned it, I never realized the RE196a Wine Stamp error. However, I did find some for sale on auction sites (Ebay, BidStart) so I thought I'd post the two examples here for anyone interested in seeing the mentioned error:

Correct RE196:


Error RE196a:


Since both the above examples contain similar cancels, my guess is that the user of the Wine stamps didn't care about the error (or didn't notice it) ... but then again, they aren't stamp collectors!

They would not have cared in the least is my guess. This was a very common tax rate at the time (about 35 million issued) and this was just one more step in the process of getting the wine to the consumers.

It's easy to overlook. What I really want to know is, who came up with such a crazy-ass denomination?

For tax purposes there were 4 different types of wine with 4 different series of rates, plus alcohol tends to come in odd sized bottles (4/5 quart, etc), plus the government made odd tax rates, such as 17 cents a gallon, or 67 cents a gallon. The result was a LOT of odd rate stamps.

If anyone's interested in the history behind why alcohol was sold in fifths -- and thus the reason for the odd denominations on the Wine stamps -- consider this explanation. Although it provides a couple of interesting scenarios, I can't guarantee its accuracy, but still found it to be an interesting bit of trivia I never researched before:

http://www.life123.com/parenting/ed...-fifth.shtml

To take it a step farther about those odd sizes, the $1.60 4/5 stamp paid a tax on still wine of 14%-21% by volume at the 67 cent rate for 2.4 total gallons from 11/1/51 through 12/31/54. This could be in various forms:
48 2/5 pints (6.4 oz)
24 4/5 pints (12.8 oz)
12 4/5 quarts (25.6 oz)
6 1-3/5 quarts (51.2 oz)
Perhaps sent by airmail using the stamps from the original thread. :-)