Re: Paper Fluorescence

Hi, I'm trying to familiarize with paper fluorescence and it's been a bit of a battle. I've seen the various lists of stamps of known fluorescence and have started putting some of the pieces of the puzzle together. But I see one glaring conflict with the charts and I'm wondering if others have noticed it too.

They show #625 Winter Ice Skates as being HF and then the unitrade catalog shows #485 Henri Bourassa as being HF too. But under my UV light it always seems that #625 is more comparable to #658-659 Canadian Authors pair which is MF. #485 is more noticeably brighter paper.

Can anyone clear the mud a bit more for me? Thanks

I feel your pain, tkoops. Notice that not a lot of philatelic friends are hopping on this one.

In the same quandary I thought I had found the solution in the chart in Unitrade (2015, page 25). How simple - I made up a card of the various suggested stamps to use for comparisons. Alas, many looked the same. Was it my UV-lamp?
Luckily for me my work in the paper and tagging varieties is over - I spent a lot of time under a black light.

I have received many a stamp mis-identified by an ebay dealer. Now, for those few varities I am missing, I ask that the dealer send me both varieties, to assure that he/she has vetted them properly.

As far as I have found out paper fluorescence is just a buy product of the paper manufacturing process and is totally uncontrolled. It depends of the raw materials that go into the paper pulp and probably more importantly on how much optical brightener the maker added to that batch of pulp.

It seems that the printers did not care about fluorescence and just used what the paper makers supplied. So it is not surprising that the stamps are so varied. In this case there is no reason why one lot of paper us collectors label HF should be that similar to another also called HF. It may be that the #625 you have was printed on a different roll of paper than the majority of that issue and is not typical.

I also do not see why one issues High Fluorescence should bear much relation to the HF of another issue except that they both have a stronger fluorescence that the average stamp whatever average is.

AQ

Thanks for the replies! I've done the same Sak with making a comparison group so I can do my best at saying for certain it's fluorescence. It's just that #625 that really seems to be in the wrong grouping... I have about 20 some copies of it and they all seem be uniform in their fluorescence but more in the MF grouping... I'm currently using the 2014 unitrade catalog and it doesn't show #625 in it's fluorescence charts. And it doesn't in the 2015 catalog eh? Maybe that stamp showing up in online charts as HF is incorrect and out of date...

Thanks again for the replies, TK