Need Help Identifying Please

Hi, I'm new at stamp collecting and have been lost trying to identify . I believe it's U93 but purple vs violet etc? Also is top cover worthless since 1/2 of stamp is missing. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Top cover is worthless

What are the stains on top cover? If they are blood, might at least be a story behind it.

HI Jessy, U93 refer to the image in the Scott catalogue, it's preferable to use the Scott # to ID stamp, now they have a lot of color variation and difrent die for this design, and it's hard to see on a computer screen as it change from one computer to the other one.

But contrary to rDavid, I will not say the damage one os worthless, it can be usefull if you want to specialize in this area as reference material. I really like damage stamps for research and study when you need a lot of mayerial to compare; they are cheap and do the job

The dark violet issue ended in 1920 and has only watermarks 19 and 20 (1915 year date). When the war ended the war tax was repealed which returned the 1st class postage rate to 2 cents. The large quantity of left over 3 cent stamped envelopes were surcharged to 2 cents in 1920.

The purple issues began in 1932 when the first class rate increased to 3 cents. The colors of this issue range from bright purple to almost black.

For more details and for better identification help than provided in the Scott Catalog, see my book

Collector's Guide to the Circular Dies, the Washington-Franklins of US Postal Stationery available from the United Postal Stationery Society.

@jobi01
Thanks for the history lesson. I personally find what various countries did to their postal services during wartime to be fascinating.