So I Thought This Was Just An Inking Anomaly...

It's amazing to me how sometimes seeing similar items over the years doesn't resonate until you see more than one in close temporal proximity.

I was looking through an APS circuit book shipment and saw a Scott # R82c ($2 Mortgage) with what appeared to be inking anomalies in the lower left corner. I paid it no never mind and continued onwards. In the same shipment, but in a different book from a different seller, I saw a suspiciously similar R82c.

Well dip me in poop and call me stinky: it's not an inking anomaly but a persistent plate flaw (erosion/corrosion?).

I'm sure it's well known to platers, but not being a plater I had always just assumed it was an inking error.

I include 3 images below (you may need to click on them and open them at full size to see some of the details).

1. The 2 stamps side by side.

2. The same image but with consistent attributes highlighed.

3. A higher-resolution scan of the lower left corners of the two stamps overlapping.

Not very valuable, but they take on a different tenor with me if a plate variety rather than just an inking/washing error.

Either something spilled on the plate or the plate was used previously and incompletely burnished. I might have seen an example at WESTPEX, it looks familiar.

It would be interesting to see the exact pattern of the anomalous pits, or dings...in isolation, that is.

Definitely a consistent variety / plate position. Nice find.

Ashbrook would call these rust marks; but always hard to be sure.

That makes sense to me,
if the steel plate rusts even marginally, one is going to come across pits, in the face of the plate.
Those marks look typical (to me) of such an occurence.

i agree with revcollector on this. I have also seen fingerprints on some issues that do not appear to have occurred after printing as if a poor plate cleaning prior to storage.
i have also seen this variety and thought that it was rust on the plate. incomplete burnishing of a previously used plate is a possibility that cannot be overlooked.
it would be nice if possible to see the marks isolated from the rest of the design but I do not know how this could be done.

I have this variety (damaged plate) marked as position 43. I don't have any supporting plating info so I must have been given this position by Steven Perch.

Hi Dan,

My copy looks like it's dated four years earlier than yours (1865), and it has more smudginess at the bottom left.

Sorry about the lousy cell phone picture, I'll scan it properly later if you want.

Jim

Better image of the smudginess.

Jim