Does This Increase Vaue?

Hey stamp collectors!
I was looking in my album when I found some weird stamps. Some had one side flat, and some had weird holes punched in them. I haven't found any reference of them, so can someone tell me what they are? Here are some pics:




The green one is probably a side stamp, but what is with the purple one?
I am fairly sure they are from somewhere in the 1912-1917 zone.

Spartacus, you do need a good catalog! The first one was shown to be a coil in one of your earlier posts. You can tell because it has two opposite sides without perforations. Coil stamps are made to be used in affixing machines.
The one with the small holes in it is a "perfin". Perfins are stamps bought by a company. To prevent them from being used by employees for private purposes the holes were punched in them. For regular collectors these holes do not add to the value of the stamp, but rather subtract from it. However, some folks make collections out of perfins and try to identify them.
Coilstamps can be very valueable, but they are preferably collected as pairs so it is easier to prove that they are not "fabricated", Hope all this helps,

Peter

I would just add that the purple one is not imperforate. As for identifying it, somebody has marked it as "535." That is a Scott number. As Peter has said, you really need to get a catalog and learn how to use it, if you wish to pursue stamp collecting seriously. New Scott catalogs are expensive, but used ones are easy to find, and certainly for "classic" stamps like these will suffice. Bear in mind that many classic stamps appear alike, and thus identification is sometimes tricky. Nine times out of ten, if you think you've found a stamp that has a very high catalog value in Scott, you have probably misidentified it! If this is a 535 -- and I don't collect the classics, so I cannot say, all I can do is look it up in the catalog -- the CV used is $5. But as Peter points out, it is a perfin, and I don't know if that adds or subtracts to the value. One thing to keep in mind about CV -- "catalog value" -- is that it is an estimate of "retail price." A dealer would probably offer no more than 5 or 10 percent of catalog value, and items sold on ebay routinely bring in less than half of CV.

Here's a link to a 2011 edition of Scott's US Specialized Catalog for just $6.12, which is an outstanding bargain, and would be a good first catalog for someone in your situation:

http://www.amazon.com/Specialized-C...p/0894874543

Oops! I posted the wrong photo for the first one! Oh well, it was like that, but with only one side flat. It's probably just a side of a sheet.

Spartacus: Stamps that have straight edges on one side or two adjacent sides usually come from booklet panes. Stamps that have two opposite (horizontal or vertical) straight edges are usually coil stamps that are produced in lengthy rolls (or coils).