Grill Quiz Of The Day - Where Is The Ridge?

hello,

what do you do with this grill? It's at the end of the stamp, so you can't count the rows. Columns is 14, so it must be an E grill?

The thing is in this case, I don't see any ridge at all, neither horizontal nor vertical? It's just plain, like at the late I grills?

Of course I will show you the whole stamp soon :). Just want to know if I can learn to define a grill just by looking at it. Also, the stamp feels a bit ashamed as it's a bit damaged.

Now that is a nice, high resolution scan.

thank you - but it is probably not enough to define the ridge or grill, as it seems :).

Hi stamperix, for what ever it is worth, try watermarking your stamp, maybe or maybe not you will see some results.

Stampmaster

Gentle suggestion ... my apologies if it comes off a bit strong.
If you really want accurate responses, you need to provide FULL information rather than half information which can be interpreted as game-playing.

For grills that would typically be a normal exposed scan of the front and of the back, and a third scan of the back with highly exaggerated contrast to show the points as clearly as possible. A side-lit photo is often better - and the photo you provide is quite nice. Certain stamps only come with certain grill possibilities and that is one of the quick indicators of a fake grill, etc., so seeing both sides is quite important.

Hi John,

no this is ok and I know that this is the reason there are no answers to my question. But I can tell you why I just showed the grill: I am still a beginner and do not know all the things you all know. So if I look at a stamp I don't know all the possibilities and probabilities that are connected to that stamp - although I can look at Scott and Micarelli. That is why it would really help me to learn whether an expert (and one day me, too) for grills could identify a grill just by looking at it, without further information. I will show you the stamp later or tomorrow, I just wanted to really focus on the grill to learn about its structure. It does not help me much if the answer is that "with that stamp only this one grill is possible", and that's why it's that grill. But I understand also that you don't want to write a whole introduction for grills as an answer to my small question.

hi stampmaster, thank you, too - do you mean because of damage or repairs? As mentioned it's quite damaged, it has a bad tear just over the grill.

I am no grill expert and never will be, but to clarify a bit my post, there are enough fake grills that one is better served by seeing everything about a stamp from the beginning - to determine whether a grill is real or fake - then if real, to build on that.

To take a liberty and rephrase stampmaster's post: It does seem odd to recommend watermarking a stamp not on watermarked paper, but yes, a dip in watermark fluid might show faults and repairs not normally obvious.

Thank you again. Sure - but here also it would be nice to know whether there are things that show it could be a fake grill - not because of the stamp ID, but because of the grill structure.

But here I go and show more of the puzzle game. Normally it must be an E grill. But for me it does not look like an E grill or those I know. So it's a fake grill? But how can I know concerning the grill structure?

It's a split (E) grill, Scott 89 var. They are listed and valued in the Scott Specialized.

hello and thank you. Yes, that's what I thought, too, and expected as answer, but now I don't know why it is an E grill and not a fake grill. I don't see any ridges, it's more like squares at the late I grills. Is that also typical for E grills?

Hi, watermarking a stamp that does not have a watermark is an old timer's trick from the old days. Still valuable tool for today's high tech stamp collectors.

Stampmaster

Hi Stampmaster, well watermarking with special fluid is actually too much high tech for me :). And I am not sure if the ridges of this grill would really be more clear or the squares disappearing.

Viewing watermarks is pretty low tech. A lot of watermarks can be seen without the use of fluids. A Special watermarking fluid is relatively new, up till Clarity was developed for the APS, people used Ronsonal or Zippo lighter fluid. All are safe to use even on gummed stamps. A few drops on the back of the stamp laying on a black surface is all it takes.

Still up to your old tricks I see.

Let's take a close look at one of your grill pics shot from directly above:




Do you see what the arrow at the top is pointing at? It is a row of "half points" which appear as horizontal dashes. That is a tell-tale characteristic of an E-grill which has a row like that at top OR bottom OR both. It always occurs at right angles to the grill ridges. Does it in this case?

To see that, look at the grill points I have "circled" in your picture. Notice that those points are NOT square, but are all taller than wide. That tells you that the ridge, when we got the right angle of view, would appear to be vertical. The smaller picture had more usable information than the closeups, because you better preserved parallelism for that one.


As to the approach you took in your inquiry, I agree with John. If you want help with your stamps, show some respect for the people who are likely to give it by giving them good information. And let me further suggest that you ought not play games with them unless they invite you to do so. Your challenge had an edge to it that does not sit well.


You wrote:



You weren't testing the grill so much as testing those who would assist you. That's not nice. If you keep crying wolf, no one will listen.

Thank you for your explanations, that showed the details to my question as I hoped at the beginning with only showing the grill. I really didn't know that this could be a red rag in a stamp forum. After all I just showed a photo of a stamp. I supposed before that this was an E grill, but it looked different to any other I have, and so I wanted to focus on the appearance of the grill more than on the stamp. You gave me now the information I searched and I understood this grill much better. As said my approach - at the moment - is different that your or other experts'. I don't have that background as you, so I look sometimes just at the grill first to find out which it could be and search for structure that I can correctly define. Of course I also have the information in Scott or Micarelli concerning the stamps, but often there are so many grills that are possible, and especially I don't know at all whether a grill could be a fake.