Best-Most Rare Blank Selvage Stamps

Inspired by the recent thread about a page of Colombians, some with blank selvage.

What are your best-oldest-most rare blank selvage stamps?

As a collector of plate number items, I sometimes have gone to stamps with blank selvage attached as a substitute.

Here is mine:



And here is what I would prefer it was regarding the selvage markings:

Here is another in that same basic category:

Beautiful #39

I bought this stamp because of it's selvage. It is an American BNC Special Printing, the Aug 2 1881 third printing. O35xS

The bottom part of on the 6c above. Is that normal? How does that get classified. Missing perf or offset perf?

Tough call. Would depend on how tall that stamp is. Because of the way banknote stamps were perforated (see below) top and bottom row stamps are taller than the other eight row stamps are.

There is an excellent discussion of this in the USPCS Chronical 216 "Quest for Perfection" by Allen Campbell.

http://chronicle.uspcs.org/PDF/Chro...16/12964.pdf

"Through study of surviving large multiples and full sheets, students of the large Banknote regular issues and Official stamps have long observed that the setting of the perforating rollers for the perimeter rows, both vertically and horizontally, were consistently wider."
This phenomenon was discussed in great length by M. Jack Reinhard in 1973.*

* See 7 M. Jack Reinhard. "Basic Plate Positioning the Bank Note Issues (1870-1890)", The Congress Book. J973, 39th Ameri can Philatelic Congress. pp. 127-149.

That 6 cent is a stamp with the top or bottom row stamps having horizontal perfs that were spaced further apart. Such as this example of Scott 37:



A stamp with missing perfs between the stamp and selvage would not have perfs at the very bottom (or top). Examples of a missing perf stamp are these examples of Scott 116, as this plate number single:



or with this imprint single:

Best Type Va I've ever seen:

Nice!

I love it how all of the blue stamps in this thread have some sort of inking in their selvages, whether more ghost like like my 39, or the line in the Navy Official.

The "best" in my collection:

Ray, lovely VA !

This one isn't scarce but I will still keep the selvedge attached.

Pan American Empire express

NICE! Pan Am!!

Thank you.

Here are a few US territory Philippine stamps with blank selvedge.

Nice. Those Philippine stamps to my eye appear to have had some inspiration from the U.S. Pan Am set.

I wonder if they shared the same designers?

That first Philippine stamp jogged my recollection of this stamp that found on ebay and am using as a spacefiller until I can one day find and afford a plate number example.