O36B? Or O36tc2c Did Scott Get It Wrong?

I have a page from my Scott Specialized album that shows a 2c Navy Official stamp in green labeled as an error with number O36b. However, the Scott catalog says that the deep green color is a proof (O36TC2c).

I'm guessing that the album page was printed in error and that there is no such stamp as O36b (error). True? Or does someone know some other story about this stamp?

Do you know how old your Scott specialized pages are? This is just a guess, but ... perhaps at one time Scott did recognize an O36b that was green and later decided that it was a trial color proof. This happened with the former Scott 66 & 74 that are now considered to be proofs. Perhaps someone with access to older Scott catalogues can try to verify this.

I don't know exactly, but circa 1980 would be my guess for when the album page was printed. I have a Scott catalog from 1985 and there is no mention of O36b. O36TC2 in green is listed.

The oldest Specialized I have is 1973 and there is a footnote under O36 that says: "The 2c green, both perforated and imperforate, is believed to be a trial color proof."

That's interesting because I really don't think this album page is prior to 1973. My father and I started using the Specialty Album series in the mid to late 1970s. Over the years, I've mixed pages from three different album sets. Two stopped at 1976 and one stopped at 1984.

Did Scott call it a proof in 1973, then loose their minds and call it an error some years later, then back to calling it a proof?

Here are photos of the O36 listing in the 1940 Scott Specialized (the year Scott switched to the letter designation for Air mail, Officials, revenues..} and the 1945 Scott Specialized.

Thanks for posting the pictures from your old Specialized catalogs. I am sure that the 2c green is a color proof. I just don't know how I ended up with an album sheet calling it an error.

Frequently album makers are slow to reflect catalogue changes. My album has spots for both 66 & 74 even though these items had been considered trial color proofs long before the pages were printed. The latest (June 2017) U.S. Stamp News issue has a reprint of the 1942 article that led to Scott 55 thru 62 being delisted and, for the most part, moved to the essays & trial color proofs sections of the catalogue. To this day, you will still see Scott 56 (now listed as essay 65-E15h) offered on ebay.