Possible 3 Cent Experimental Orange Brown. *again..., Sorry*

Was using a loop to look for re entries and found this stamp to be interesting.
I wonder if it shows the characteristics of the Exp. OB? Are my images good enough to make that judgement?

It's good enough. Not an EOB. I would say this stamp was printed in the latter half of 1854. Lots of plate wear. Even though some EOB printings can be a little on the grainy side, they are never quite that bad.

understood. The EOB was early in the life (Oct. 1851)of the Late State of plate 1. Makes sense the plate wouldn't show significant wear.

At first glance I thought it was just a poorly inked or dry print and didn't give it much attention.
When I took a closer look today, I thought the medallion area had the look of EOB stamps.

Didn't find any new re entries today either.

Keep looking. Exp OBs in my opinion, are way overrated in terms of price and attention given to them. They are definitely a neat variety, well worth collecting and all, but they aren't nearly as rare as auction realizations would seem to indicate. If you know what you are looking for, these can be found.

Personally, I just think that the name "Experimental" connotes something exotic and, therefore, probably rare. That gets sellers and less knowledgeable buyers excited. Additionally, the logistical difficulty of getting any 3c colors properly identified just adds to the issue.

AMEN!

Of course the biggest reason why I'd like to find one, is because I haven't found one.
The easy way would be to buy one that's already identified. But I like the joy of the hunt.

I think that the EOB has been a little over-hyped. There is no proof that Toppan Carpenter was conducting any experiments, plausible as that may seem. There is a story to be told about Plate 1L shades from 1851 and even perhaps early 1852 but what that exactly is is actually unknown. Call the EOB shade what you want but good examples are indeed fairly scarce and no decent 3c collection is complete without one IMO. From my experience, you might find 500-1000 orange brown stamps for every good EOB. I think the $400 realizations are a little steep but I wouldn't let my good ones go for less than $250 or $300.

I include early 1852 in my date range because I have never seen a really good example of early '52 claret from any other plate than Plate 1L and it seems to me that some of them must have been printed in early '52.

I think it is harder to find a good early '52 claret than it is an EOB.

Great...one more thing for me to attempt to discover. Sometimes I think you enjoy torturing me.

I agree on the spring 52 clarets.
That is a tough color and very nice when you get a good one.

I'm foolishly going to attempt showing a Claret stamp. I struggle capturing detail and even worse showing color. But, here goes.

First image is a picture. My camera shows detail better than my scanner. Although, this one doesn't show the detail of the shoulder area. It may be a problem with the stamp not laying flat for me. I just gave it a peroxide bath. Should have left it in the book longer.

Edit: The triangles are washed out in the image also.
I was hoping to get an idea of the early Claret quality you were speaking of.


Then I used the scanner to try and show the color.

Stampcrow: There is something wrong with the scanner image. It appears to be "smeared" (for the lack of a better word) by an inappropriate digital filter. Try scanning again and check to see if the scanning software is applying a sharpening filter or "unsharp mask". You may have to use "advanced mode" or something like that to check all your options. Turn off any options like "despeckle" or anything else that might be proccessing the image.

Stampcrow - your scan exhibits jpeg artifacts, typical of a high amount of jpeg compression. Try saving the scan at highest quality setting.

600dpi is best setting available. I did find an "advanced settings" area. Doesn't show much. No filter info or the like. I did check the box for "Optimize For Image Quality". There is a slider for File Size/Quality, I slid that to "Best Quality".
This is the scan

I am not sure if you were looking for confirmation on the color or not? It wouldn't be a bad idea to post other stamps along side to get a feel for how your equipment is reproducing color. I will try some time this week to post some good Plate 1L color specimens from 1851 and early 1852.

Thanks Winston, that would be helpful.
I really need better equipment.
I wasn't expecting color confirmation, It's not really sensible with this scanner.

This stamp is a version Claret. I was hoping to get a feel for what the early 52 Claret might be. I assumed it would show a nice sharp impression.

Thanks for checking those scanner settings. I got a new scanner a couple years ago and with default settings got results reminiscent of yours (and many others). When I turned off the "unsharp mask" setting I got good results. It worked for me, so I suggested you give it a try.

My theory is that my scanner software was applying a sharpening filter that was designed for 8 1/2 x 11 pages. Compare your scans with your camera output. In the scans, dark areas, especially the cancel, have artificially brightened pixels just across the edge in lighter areas. That's what sharpening filters do. Or it could be something completely different... probably better discussed in a different thread.