Nicaragua 175 Questions

I was doing a little research on the Panama Canal, and stumbled on the story concerning the Momotombo Volcano stamp that doomed the Nicaraguan route. So, I had to look at my stamps.

In this example, I have identified it as Scott #175, setting 2, with the spacing of the cents-5 at 4 mm. My questions are:

1. What was the purpose of the wavy lines? Were they meant to cover up the lower 10 centavos? If so, good luck on that as none of my examples are anywhere close.



2. What do you make of the multiple "drips" throughout?


3. Lastly, back to the wavy lines. On very close look, and maybe an optical illusion, but I think I see the word "ZERO" hidden back there. Maybe just the "Z", but pretty odd, no?

Partime- here is my Nicaragua 175 with "5" and "cents' 4mm apart...






Here the wavy lines partially cover the lower tablet value.




My stamp overprint is lighter than yours, but I see no hidden messages.




You will note my copy does not have that. But take a look at my 1905 Scott 178...



It has the bubbles, but in a different location.

The wavy lines show up as a feature on overprints over several years, so I think it is just a design element. Yvert lists them as lignes ondulées, roughly translated as wavy lines.

I don't suspect that they were intended to perform a defacing function.

Whew ... Glad that someone else has the same thing. My copy of US239 has a particularly bad "drip" that I am sure decreases the value significantly.

my guess is that the ink had too much water in it or the paper used was moist and that is was what cause the ink to flow and then dry for those effects on the stamp above .The U.S. stamp above was just a dirty plate or something fell on the plate like water or oil .