Speaking Of Jumbos ... How's This!

biggest one I've ever seen and I like the arrow, so I'd live wit the small faults

That's the thing, eyeonwall, like you, I've never seen its equal. It seems to be in a class of it's own. Certainly, there must be others like it somewhere out there in "stampland," but they must really be rare.

Just one more thing: Because of the size of the margins and how the stamp is positioned (Vis-e-vis, between the arrow guide and the stamp to its right), it's very possible that it could simply be the result of a printing error, which was subsequently caught early enough and corrected before many more were printed. This might explain why we haven't seen others like it. I know it's only conjecture, but it could be true, right?

A combination of events, both operator error, took place to produce your right pane #1.
First the sheet was cut about 1mm to the left of the arrow and then the right pane was fed into the perforator about 1mm to the right and angled. I wonder what #91 looked like. If the perf line continued at that angle, would it have touched the right side ten rows lower?

Per the Alan Campbell article, the perforating wheels could and did slip and wander. That and Phil's point got you your stamp.

Also per the article and from what I've been told, truly nobody cared about jumbos before the 1960s unless perfectly centered. Natural straight edges were and still are generally disliked. Even more reason for someone to cut the perfs off an example like this and try to pass it off as an imperf.

A stamp like yours proves why an imperf Banknote single can't ever be trusted to be real. I've seen a few dozen faked Banknote imperfs over the years with supposedly big enough margins, so there were also a greater number of jumbos like this a long time ago.

I like seeing this unmutilated survivor, a clearcut but just a single example of what can happen to stamps in the overall printing process. Just please don't fall into the jumbo collectors' "mine is bigger than yours" obsession.

Thank you all! Your input is well received. I put the stamp on view, simply because I needed your individual and collective opinions as to how common this phenomenon was and what might be its value in a collection. In other words, is it merely to be accepted and added to a collection as an "oddity," or might there actually be some added monetary value to it?

How to deal with this is up to the individual. I collect varieties for all different reasons, including what's been said above. There are other people who just want to fill spaces in the album and that's fine for them. They'd sell or trade this.

It's worth more than the usual stamp, which doesn't say much. How much more? Since it's a straight edge and not a sound example, it's hard to say and it probably won't be very much. Actually selling it would establish the value, right?

If you auctioned it on ebay with no reserve and a $0.01 starting bid, I'd expect it to end up somewhere in the $5-$10-$15 range. Doubt it would be any higher though. If sound and (genuinely) perforated on all 4 sides (with a recent PF or PSE cert), it would almost certainly be in the mid-$100's. And that explains why so many of these very large straight-edge copies with problems get reperforated and expertly repaired...

There's not a ghost of a chance that this stamp will ever be altered while I have it. Whatever faults it may have (i.e. Straight-edge, etc.), it will remain as it is.

Nope. Its what littleriverphil said that is correct.

Nice stamp and interesting answers. Just wanted to show my "little big" 2 Cents jumbo - as well with straight edge but well centered. I didn't find those big margins on other of those Washingtons.

probably from a booklet pane

I can't remember seeing margins wider than this.

Mizar... sorry this is a late answer but I am 56 and yes, I sure do remember cracker jack. The prize was the best part.

I agree and have always been a treasure hunter. I'm one of those guys at a show that always dig through the "junk" box at the end of the table or under it. The hunt for a hidden gem, even if it's not really all that valuable, that's part of the fun for me!

Jeff