US 1931 Postage Due - Colour Question

Just acquired a few more US postage dues to supplement my collection. I thought I had these down, but of course when I look at them again, I question my judgment on the colour.
Nevermind 4 years of art college, these little buggers get me every time!

So here are three, all perf 11x10.5, so they are all J80s. They are listed in Scotts as dull carmen or scarlet. And yet here are three different hues.

I understand the problems of id-ing colour on a computer - different scanners, monitors etc. But I think when you see them side by side on the same scan you can get a sense of what they look like.

Sooooo. What do you experts say? Help out an artist with tired eyes.

These stamps were printed from 1931 to 1959, so even the most recent examples are over 50 and a lot can happen to them in that time. There were billions issued in a variety of not overly stable shades. Scott only lists a couple of basic shades because they are not going to use up space for several very common ones for every value because these stamps will never be worth more than 25 cents each unless the basic catalog value increases some day.
Essentially anything not distinctly scarlet (like the stamp on the right)is dull carmine.

They appear to be, l to r:
dull carmine
scarlet, dry print
scarlet, wet print

I agree with John Becker on ID's. On a related note, it's a very nice reference grouping & will help you properly identify any other denominations from the set.

I found this thread while working on my US Postage Dues and was encouraged by the mention of a reference scan, but it looks like the scan is no longer available. Does anyone know where I can find a similar reference visual for the 1931-1959 Postage Due series?

Mine are handy, so I assembled a new scan, although in looking at it, the differences are not as obvious as I had hoped.



Scott has made a mess of their listings on this issue in recent years. I left a small packet of comments about this issues with them at Omaha on Friday.

Dull carmine (wet print, this is listed as "dry" in error for J80a-J84a in the current Specialized) came out first.

Scarlet (wet) came out about 1943 as an ink change during the war.

Scarlet (dry) came out in 1958 and have a whiter paper and slightly raised ink resembling thermography to some extent. Relative small quantity printed from only 2 plates for each denomination.

If you get enough of them together, the printings will become fairly obvious. I ignore the mixed-up Scott sub-letters and group them chronologically as above.

John Becker, thank you for the quick and thorough response. A lot can happen while I'm out mowing the lawn!

I have been working on assembling a quantity of these for comparison, and I am just getting started on working through that, so this helps a lot!

I like your organization...this makes much more sense than the Scott listings. Do you think I should be able to see the slightly raised ink on the dry scarlet printings with my microscope? I bought it for mineral collecting, but have found it quite useful for stamp collecting too. I will have to give it a try.

Thanks again,
Alan

Alan, Yes, the dry printing will be obviously different under high magnification - raised, even bubbly. The wet printings are very flat.