Roy White's "Encyclopedia Of The Colors..." Mystery

The other day I found some very odd color plates jammed in the back of a large format book I recently purchased.

They appear to be color plates from White's Encyclopedia of the Colors of United States Postage Stamps, but they're slightly different from the actual plates.

I've attached a copy of one of the plates I found below. It's identical in size, background color, paper weight and finish to the plate in the "Encyclopedia", but it is not punched for a five ring binder and it does not have the Scott numbers or color descriptors printed below each stamp's image. The plates also are missing the "Under each illustration are Scott Catalog numbers." and "Copyright 1981 Philatelic Research Ltd." at the bottom of the plate.

The back of the plate I found is identical to the plate in the "Encyclopedia"

Has anyone ever seen plates like these before?

The White Plate from Volume 4 of his "Encyclopedia":



The Plate I found:



The back of the plate I found:



Thanks for the help.

Interesting. I have a copy of the book, and it is fantastic. My page looks identical to the "real" page.

I understand that during production of the book, there were many color adjustments made to make sure that the color came out "just right". A friend of mine actually has some of the stamps that were used to make the book. Perhaps these are some test pages used before approval of the final page?

Is there any other provenance in the large format book that you mentioned? There might be some of the test stamps hidden in there somewhere ... you may want to look again.

I found several of the plates inside the back cover of a copy of Schmidt's The Expert's Book.... I bought the book from an on line book store based out of Seattle. It was in pristine condition--not a scratch or scuff on it. Still had Schmidt's order form for expertizing supplies in it and two bookmarks from his publisher. The only thing that stopped it from being brand new was a lack of cellophane.

I was pretty shocked when I found the plates, and called the book store up and asked. They had no idea where they came from, where they got the book from, or anything else.

I've looked in between every page and haven't found anything else.