I Have A Question About A Stamp

No telling how many hours of our lives we will never get back due to overly long meetings. I removed one of the existing conference room table and chairs and replaced it with a 'standing' table like this...


Not surprisingly, meetings suddenly got a lot shorter when people could no longer sit on their butts!
Don

Nice.

This is common for scrums.

Hello StampSpot! Welcome to the forum!

Given that there have been 15 responses to your question thus far - and only the first couple even remotely attempting to answer your question - I will try to offer something as an answer:

You found a 2c Jackson stamp. What Scott # it is remains to be determined. The smart money is guessing it is a #178, until proven otherwise.

The 'snap the stamp near your ear' test is not the generally accepted method!!

(We try to avoid touching stamps with our hands - much less using them as musical instruments! They are fragile pieces of paper - over 100 years old!!)

According to the Scott catalog, there were only 917 copies of #180 printed, and only 25 copies 'expertized & available' to collectors. None used.

Though it may offend some, your chances of having found a used #180 are equal to being hit by lightning while aboard an airplane being hijacked by terrorists - as the plane flies over a volcanic eruption...

A good scan of your stamp will help!

The generally accepted method to determine 'hard' vs 'soft' paper is to hold the stamp up to a bright light source. If the light shines through the paper, it is 'hard' paper; if it does not shine through, it is 'soft' paper.

To answer your specific question - if in fact you found a used #180 - it would be worth hundreds of thousands of $. But don't quit your day job just yet...

**

Now for the rest of you:

Specifically AJ:

You certainly haven't crossed any line. You should not be so surprised. I'll refrain from dumb jokes about your 'shear' number of questions...

There are lots of new members - especially recently - simply asking if the stamp they've discovered is that rare $100,000 italicized item they see in the catalog. They generally can't distinguish between a perf gauge & a tire gauge. So simple questions - with simple answers - are part of the territory in this forum. Really any forum, for many of the reasons mentioned previously...

Many members - myself included - would be fascinated to hear you talk about paper. I would love to know the GPS coordinates of the tree that was cut down to produce the paper on my banknote stamps. Start your own new thread - talking about paper - its history - production - pulp content - etc etc etc - and you'll find lots of extremely interested members. But don't be so upset when new members - perhaps brand new collectors - ask basic questions that do not require a PhD in Paper Science to respond...

Quite effectively prevents a "BOGSAT" (bunch of guys sitting around a table)

I'm a newbie to this website, but I have collected stamps for over a decade.I would like to know more about different papers , perfs, etc. If a subject appears too deep for me I don't stay with that particular discussion.

AJ - You say "soft" paper isn't really soft and "hard" paper isn't hard. How do you define soft? Compressability comes to my mind. If "soft" paper is more porous, then I would expect it to be more compressible (although not exactly the best way for a collector to ID paper by)

The so-called "soft porous" paper is one of the most innovative new types of paper made in America during the 19th century. Making a new kind of paper is one thing, but making it a commercial success is a rare achievement. Nobody has ever heard of it before. This paper was used for a dozen years between 1878 and 1890. Nobody knows this story. It's incredible.

There's a bit of apprehension here, I feel it. By the end of this summer the article will be out and the presentation given. So, the wait is almost over. I'm sorry I mustn't say more, for the sake of the publication and the convention. As the information become public we can revisit the subject here, and perhaps draw more interest in this forum as well.

Taxstamp. Yes, we can talk about Keiji in good time. For those who don't know, Keiji Taira and W.Wilson Hulme were my mentors. Gone, but not forgotten. That will be a good topic for discussion, but saved for another day.

AJ, what really would help me and many other collectors in this topic, was just a scan or better photo under magnification of different paper types. If the rag vs. wood pulp content could be an important part of defining papers, it would really be interesting to see how both looks. Do you have examples of stamp paper with no, low, middle and high (only) wood pulp vs. rag content under for example 100x magnification you could show? Or can't we "see" the fibers as differences?

I have not spent a lot of time trying to I soft vs hard paper, but the last time I looked at a batch of cheap Banknotes, I had the impression for the ones I though were soft tended to have sight toning of the paper compared to the hard ones. Anyone confirm?

Hi mdroth and all I put the stamp in a bright light and it looks transparent. I will see if I can add link here.

Hard paper is brighter under long wave UV light. Soft paper looks dead in comparison.

Ok guys I have some pics of this luck stamp. I have 2 pictures of this showing the front and the back in light. You can see that it is hard white paper it looks fairly transparent.


https://s9.postimg.cc/mw1u6hzwf/201..._resized.jpg

https://s9.postimg.cc/jcfwg69vz/201...0_231258.jpg
https://s9.postimg.cc/x6495sfi7/201...0_231938.jpg

Sorry, that is a soft paper stamp... Scott #183.