German Souvenir Sheets With No Gum On Margin

There are a couple of German souvenir sheets that are gummed on the back of the stamps only, but ungummed on the margins (B33 and B58). I noticed that the never hinged catalog value is MUCH higher than the hinged value (as is the case for much of Germany). Now what's to stop someone from carefully washing the hinge marks off of the sheet without damaging the paper? I am viewing a B58 on ebay that is supposedly MNH, but the scan of the back looks like the paper is a little disturbed where someone might have removed hinge marks. If there were hinge marks, I suppose someone could have been even more careful in cleaning off the evidence without damaging the paper at all. Or am I confused, and the sheet counts as MNH as long as the stamps themselves are MNH? (This seems to be probably not the case, because nobody would hinge the stamps, which are in the center of the sheet.)



*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***
*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

In Michel, MNH prices apply only if the margin is MNH as well.

I wouldn't pay NH prices for this issue or the IPOSTA sheet (B33) unless they were signed by a BPP expert or had a cert as those can also be regummed as well. There's also an obvious diagonal crease along the right side of the one pictured, looking at it from the back, so I wouldn't pay too much for this one, even if it is NH. I probably wouldn't go much over, say, 20% of hinged CV, but that's me. My copy of this issue has no obvious hinge marks, but then again, it doesn't have any gum at all, even on the stamps. That was a fault I was willing to live with, since the rest of it is nice and fresh.

Most of the sheets (B33 and B58) that I have seen - actual, or photographs, have wavy margins to some degree.