Perf 11 US Franklin/Washington Coils

I am very puzzeled about the perf 11 -washington coils 1 cent to 5 cent stamps/ even a franklin 10 cent ? Are they out there? I can't fine much about these stamps. Out of 28 stamps these perf coil 11s have no watermarks. They are both verticle and horizontal coils. All are flat plate ecept a 2 cent red rotary. Can any one help me, understand where they came from? I purchased 100s of franklin/washingtons and they were in the collection?

*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

An excellent resource for all things Washington-Franklin:

http://www.stampsmarter.com/1847usa...ankmain.html

they come from scissors, or less likely, inaccurate perf gauges

Perforation 11 was first used experimentally in 1915 on one U.S. stamp (Scott # 461) and was later overall used on U.S. flat plate printed stamps starting in 1917. From 1914 on wards, most U.S. coil stamps were printed by Stickney rotary press and perforated 10 horizontally or vertically. There are no BEP U.S. coil stamps that were perforated 11 unless they were trimmed from sheet or booklet stamps, but there is a BEP U.S. Philippine flat plate coil stamp with perforation 11 (Scott # 326).

Just as an FYI, Alvin Filstrup/Covel Manufacturing Company privately perforated #345 & #408 (according to Scott) and this #409 (all horizontal coils). They are perf'ed. about 11.75, or exactly 12-67 on the Kiusalas gauge. I'm not aware of any 4-5 cent Covels known. Perhaps this may be what you have; be sure you are using the gauge correctly. As stated, there are no known BEP perf. 11's that aren't fakes, and I'm not aware of any privately manufactured perf 11's.

All,
FFiisshh22 sent the following six messages to the Moderators last night, I am assuming that he actually meant to post them so I am copying them here so folks can offer feedback.



Hobbyists have been altering coil stamp for decades; some manufactured these fakes becasue the coils are much rarer stamps.



Detecting altered/faked coils can be very difficult at times.






There are many threads which discuss how and why Washington/Franklin coils stamps were faked. Some folks estimate that as many as 80%-90% of all Washington/Franklin coils are fake. To better understand how the a faked Washington/Franklin coils were made, you can use this link
http://www.stampsmarter.com/1847usa/WFFakes.html




To learn how to post images, please refer to this help page
https://www.stampcommunity.org/sc_t...g_images.asp
If you need further assistance, let me know and I can help you.




The USPO pushed to meet the demand of coil stamps back in the day; many collectors did not notice/collect them when they were first released. Once the various coil varities were widely noticed, they were no longer available. It is very easy to simply use some scissors and 'make' a stamp to fill a space in an album. This has been happening since the 1920s and it is not unusual to find them in older collections and albums.

Images can be a great help so others can evalue which stamps are involved and if any alterations have taken place.

FFiisshh22,
It is best to ask questions about stamps by publicly posting (since the entire community sees them); the 'Send Note To Staff' link is only seen by Staff and is mostly used to inquire about forum operations.
Don

So what do you do with one of these fake coil stamps?
Where do you put in your album or do you just throw it away?
I happen to have a 30 cent Franklin perf 11 vertically.

it depends if you like them, if you think it's interesting, keep it, if not, sell it or give it away.

Start a reference collection of altered stamps. We all need to learn to spot the faked or altered stamps of our own specialty or field. And that takes the spurious item out of circulation.

Fake US flat plate coils were mass produced as early as the 1930s. The APS was able to shut down one large operation that openly advertised its wares. The coils were characterized by metric (exact) perf 12 perforations. I didn't find references on the Internet, but at least one article about the exploit and subsequent actions by the APS to shut it down was written by Ken Lawrence. Fakes produced after Richard Kiusalas published the US Specialist Gauge were produced with correct perforation spacing, now dominate the marketplace. Genuine examples of most perf 12 coils are seldom found.