314A ? ~ What Say You...

And STILL no high-resolution image. Notice how 608K carefully avoids responding to any of the posts referring to that request.

We're being trolled.

No reason to send any more info to this group as you all have determined that the experts that evaluated my stamp are correct.

I do want to thank everyone that commented as all the comments were the expected ones...nothing new came up.

I think it is evident that when it comes to coils the members of this forum group have far more confidence in the APS & PF than I do. Frankly, I do not trust their opinions on coils.

By the way, I am extra cautious if the request comes from Seigel's. Too many coils that were sold as genuine coils look like they have nice round holes. Just some thoughts on my feelings about the capabilities.

Hope you all have a Happy New Year

So basically, it was a big waste of everyone's time and effort, since you never intended to provide any specifics from the get go. By refusing to provide the requested information, you turned this into a giant self-fulfilling prophecy.

FFS.

It's only a waste of time if the single goal was to convince this person that their stamp was a Scott # 303. Others of us got an interesting look at how people looked over a stamp and determined that it was a fake.

True, however deliberately withholding requested information based on preconceived notions and/or to arrive at certain conclusion is disingenuous at best. That's the annoyance.

By not producing any of the evidence it feels like we got played. Moving forward, I would not be surprised if folks asked that all evidence be produced 'up front' before they are willing to start offering opinions on these type threads.
Don

So, when I asked what we hope to accomplish here, the main result was that 608K heard the same comments from yet another group of individuals. I guess he is hoping to get one group to agree with him, and then use this group in his next research paper. Sort of best-out-of-5, I guess. Not a complete waste of time, in my opinion. I certainly learned how to read a little more into the issues.

Now onto the next topic.

Certainly not a waste of time. Lots of great info shared over the course of 6 pages. While the question at hand may have never been in doubt, it was definitely an interesting discussion. Just for me, personally, I had never heard of this Travers guy - always fascinating to read about our upstanding citizens working at the USPS! (And interesting to know it is a long-standing trend!) And while unfortunate, it is always essential to be aware of the lengths to which folks will go to try to create deception on our precious little pieces of paper!

So in the end, evidence still beats speculation. As it should.

the 3rd post in this thread stated



not sure why anyone thought this discussion would turn-out any differently

The important thing was to get the discussion out there so anyone interested could read it. And to point out the possible reasons for the PF and APEX decisions plus any reasons for thinking those decisions incorrect. I doubt anyone expected it to turn out differently, with the possible exception of the owner of the item who was hoping for converts.

Final comments:

In essence the experts are claiming that some forger in 1907 took a super jumbo stamp that he found worth about $50 in 1907 dollars, promptly destroyed it to make a fake coil 3 years before coil stamps were accepted by the philatelic community as collectible stamps. This is a bit of a stretch.

The other point that everyone seems to casually dismiss is no one has been able to show a # 303 super jumbo large enough to be trimmed on 4 sides in order to have a vertical coil with private perfs on the sides.

If anyone on the forum knows Lawrence or Chad Snee you might want to ask them if they were the ones involved in modifying the Scott's catalog to highlight a trimmed # 303 with private perfs in the # 314A section.

what about a scan and high quality photos of your stamp?

"In essence the experts are claiming that some forger in 1907 took a super jumbo stamp that he found worth about $50 in 1907 dollars, promptly destroyed it to make a fake coil 3 years before coil stamps were accepted by the philatelic community as collectible stamps. This is a bit of a stretch".

This is nonsensical. No one in 1907 would have had a clue about the stamp market in 2018. At the time the stamp was a current issue worth FOUR CENTS.
And you are assuming this was deliberately faked instead of the more likely probability that someone simply used a razor to cut apart a sheet, and this row happened to have tall stamps.
In addition, you have proved NOTHING regarding the possibility of "private perfs" except to quote two people who think it possible for their own as yet unexplained reasons. So not finding a jumbo on four sides is meaningless.
Plus as has been requested a dozen times, you still refuse to post a high resolution scan. At this point it seems safe to say that you just like reading yourself on this forum.

To me, it looks like nothing more than a Scott 303 that was subsequently trimmed (at top and/or bottom).

I suspect a higher-resolution scan would show the perfs are not "private" and in fact are typical of the regularly-issued Scott 303. A side-by-side scan with a Scott 303 would allow us to easily compare & confirm that. That's a simple request that could have saved 6 pages of discussion, and would be an important piece of evidence for the claim.

I also suspect that a high-resolution scan would show that any "ticks" or indentations along the edge(s) are definitely not "hesitation marks" or anything else consistent with coil production, but rather evidence of the prior perf 12 perfs.

It's possible the top and/or bottom margins were trimmed while the stamp was on the card, but it's also possible it was removed and later replaced following the alteration. IMO, there is some evidence in the ellipse strike that the stamp has moved slightly. The usual forensic techniques could provide more insight (and might also explain the "shadow" at top on the APS image -- maybe the stamp wasn't quite stuck back down after removal (or lifting) prior to the trimming.)

The bottom margin appears crudely trimmed, not consistent with any sort of production possibility and more likely a sign of amateur alteration. The top edge looks a little more believable (to the extent you can tell anything from the poor image,) so might be a natural straight edge.

IMO, the probability of this being an altered Scott 303 is a trillion times higher than any other possibility... The burden of proof for anything else would be on the owner/submitter, and I don't see enough (actually, I don't see anything at all...) to sway my opinion.