Previously Unknown 1914 R208?

Does anyone have any insight or opinion on this 1914 R208 with what appears to be a reverse 191R watermark?

Am I seeing this correctly as a reversed 191R?

If it is indeed a reverse 191R, has anyone ever heard or seen this series with a reverse watermark?

If it is If it is indeed a reverse 191R, what would be the next step to getting this recognized? (i.e. without it being recognized variety I assume the chances of getting a cert is very low?)

Note; this is not my stamp, I am trying to help another person.

While the Germans in particular have made a big deal out of reversal of the watermarks, that has never been the case with U.S. postage, much less with U.S. revenues. I think the first step is to build a data base on position of watermarks. In fact I strongly doubt that anyone has even looked at position of watermarks on U.S. stamps.

It's big amongst collectors of British Commonwealth material as well. Upside down, sideways, and reversed watermarks can garner large premiums in the collecting community, and most are listed in Stanley Gibbons.

They must have had better quality control overseas, as watermark orientation appears to be far less standardized with U.S. stamps, especially some of the revenue types. When I was going through that hoard of wine stamps I purchased a while back, some upside down watermarks caught my eye... until after going through more blocks of the same denomination I realized that it really wasn't an anomaly. While right-side-up versus upside-down watermarks may not have been exactly 50-50 in proportion, it was close enough that it implied to me that one orientation wasn't markedly more scarce than the other.

Sideways watermarks presumably would be more likely if the press sheet was square rather than rectangular.