Wet Vs Dry Printed Postage Stamps

Without having to look up plate numbers, there is a way of telling apart the wet printed Stickney rotary press stamps from the dry printed Huck-Cottrell rotary press stamps by the position of the electric eye marginal markings in relation to the horizontal (or vertical) perforations.

Wet (electric eye marking level closer to horizontal perforations)


Dry (electric eye marking level farther from horizontal perforations)

Without your observation I would have thought that the 25448 was wet due to the paper and 25075 was dry because paper is so white!

The top plate block looks "sharper." I would have thought it would be the dry printing.

The second lesson is to be able to determine wet vs dry when you find a single on-cover without any sheet margin or plate number to help.

These commemorative stamps are dry printed in the midst of wet printed stamps: Scott 1063, 1064, 1072, 1076, 1079 (1016 considered wet). All stamps including Scott 1081 and after it are dry printed. Regarding the Liberty Series, the following were dry printed: Scott 1030a, 1031b, 1031A, 1032, 1033, 1033a, 1034, 1035e, 1035b, 1036c, 1036b, 1037, 1038, 1039a, 1040, (1041, 1041b, 1042), 1042A, 1043, 1044, 1044d, (1044A, 1044Ac), 1045, 1045a, 1046, 1046a, 1047, 1048, 1049a, 1050a, 1051a, 1052a, 1053, 1035f, 1036a, 1054c, 1054A, 1055d, 1055a, 1056, 1057c, 1057b, 1058b, 1059, 1059A, 1059Ab. Other dry printed stamps that were also wet printed: Scott 832c, C34a, C35b, C36a, C39b, C39c, J78b, J80b, J81b, J82b, J83, J83b, J84b, QE1a, QE2a, QE3a.

jogil: I have noticed that some 1036 plate blocks do not have any EE marginal lines. The ones I've seen were all wet printings from the right hand side of a pane. Is this true only of wet printed blocks? Is it true of all plate blocks from the right side of a wet printed pane?

JLLebbert: Yes, Durland says that the right hand gutters of wet printed stamps do not have any ee marginal lines.

Are these accurate (color/exposure) scans?

Since they were not taken together and were not from the same scanner, they are not the best possible.

The lighter one does not look correct so I would say judgments about paper, etc. may be invalid. Of course, the marginal markings are obvious.

The sheet stamps gauge 11.25 x 10.5 or 10.5 x 11.25 for the web-fed rotary press stamps.
The sheet stamps gauge 11 x 11 for the sheet-fed flat press and sheet-fed rotary press stamps.

Thread bump...

I started looking at my Liberty series and the one difference I see most if true is that the paper on dry printing is whiter. The wet printings tend to slight yellow. I went through all my Liberty stamps and it seemed to be true.

Is this a consistent review?

Usually a thicker, whiter paper and they are also newer than the wet ones. Also, a distinction should be made between dry and semi-dry printing in that dry printing used pre-gummed paper that cannot be wetted such as the sheet-fed dry printing Hoe flat plate press that was changed from wet to dry printing (1041, 1053), the sheet-fed dry printing Miehl press (1041B) and the sheet-fed dry printing Gori press (1042, 1044A). The other so-called dry printing presses like the Huck-Cottrell press just used less water to dampen the web-fed printing paper than the Stickney press used. Thus, the Huck-Cottrell printed stamps were considered (semi-) dry and the Stickney printed stamps were considered wet for most of the Liberty Series stamps.

Thanks. I did notice a gum difference for most of the ones I am sure about. I only have a couple I am not 100% sure. I was trying to get some plate blocks where they were all either wet or dry as reference.

Here is an interesting first day cover for 832c which states that it was printed from flat plates of 400 subjects on pregummed paper (dry printing).