Need Advise From Germany Sbz Experts

Recently I got a big lot of Germany definitive stamps (including SBZ and DDR). Obviously Watermarks and colors are a big deal, specifically for "Personalities" series. Signoscope is helping a lot with Watermarks, but colors are still a mystery. I wonder if anybody knows about WEB resource with dissent quality images as a reference.
For example, I have a scan of few stamps SBZ Michel #212 (watermark is clearly visible for all of them). For #212 Michel describes 3 colors with some intriguing names:
a - dark- to black(blue) gray (shades)
b - grey-black (shades)
c - greenish-gray
Last one (c) is relatively expensive.
I selected 8 stamps that (in my opinion) represent 3 different colors (3 + 3 + 2). Any comments?

Aside from the difficulty of assessing shade from a computer screen, countries - and therefore cataloguers - have different views if colours and shades. Gibbons produces a colour key, which is in line with the colours identified by the UK's Colour Council (main original use of the Council's work was for fabrics, paints etc), but that will not necessarily sit perfectly with the colours identified in Michel, Yvert or Scott.

igopp,

This is a very complex series for the SBZ collector. There are many variations, errors and color shades. As you already noted, some can be very valuable.

I don't know how good your German is, but here is a link to a study group for "das Köpfe" series.

http://www.koepfe1.de/

You can see what they are doing with the various shades in the "Farbforschung" section.

It can be very contentious. As Geoff correctly pointed out it is virtually impossible to determine subtle shades from a scan, regardless of their quality.

If you want to collect shades in this series expertization by BPP is a must. I don't know any collector that would touch a Mi 212c without a cert.

Have fun!

Dan

Geoff, Dan - thanks. I agree that color is very subjective issue. So what I hope to do is to select at a small group of "potential" candidates (212C) for further investigation and possible certification. It is practically impossible to send hundreds of stamps for certification (and I guess it is not cheap also). So my opinion that I should start with stamps 1, 2 and 5 (if start counting from left upper corner). Those are the only ones where I see at least some trace of "green".

igopp,

I don't know how far into the weeds you plan to go with SBZ stamps but because of the post-war times, there are lots of paper, gum, and color variations not to mention plate flaws, printing variations etc.

I think it is an interesting area of German stamps and I actively collect this area. I'm certainly no expert though.

Sending a bulk lot of stamps to BPP for expertization can be time consuming, costly and frustrating, especially if you have a low success rate. You might want to consider buying/borrowing a certified copy of the stamp or (less accurate) a stamp that has the same color definition to use as a template. This may help you narrow down the potential candidates.

Have fun!
Dan