Unaltering Altered Stamps

Here is a stamp that I ran across that was altered.
I have not yet plated it.
The alteration bothered me, so I removed it.
Was it the right or wrong choice?

the missing piece is very noticeable, so I tend to like the altered version slightly.

But I perfectly understand why you removed it.

I think it was OK to remove the added piece. If someone wanted to (innocently, of course) improve the appearance of the stamp by adding a piece to fill in the missing portion of the design they could have made a much better match.

I say you did the right thing. That added piece looked very wrong (to me at least), knowing that the design didn't belong that way, so in my opinion you did the right thing here. Also its not an expensive stamp.

There are some 7R1Es out there, which have had significant parts of their design added --- since they had large portions torn out of the design. These were patched in from another stamp, kind of like here, except done more professionally and fit better with the stamp. For those, I'd leave them alone, even though its often pretty obvious that they are altered.

Its kind of a case by case deal for something like this, in my opinion. If the alteration is well-done and significantly improves the stamp, then I guess its fine to keep it. Make sure and note it when you sell it of course. If it looks horrible, as in my opinion, the one you had did, I'd get rid of it as you did.

100%, right stamp, and the right thing to do so good on you.

yes, better without the alteration. However, the person that "fixed" the stamp might not have used a water soluble adhesive and you risk destroying the stamp trying to reverse the repair.

The important thing is, if the two pieces won't separate, don't try to make them separate.

I cut the piece off with a razor blade. Did not matter what kind of glue they used. I cut off a hair of the design to make sure I got all the glue off. It felt like the right thing to do.

This stamp was not "altered", it was repaired. Badly to be sure, but still just a repair.

You are correct, repaired not altered as it did not change the catalog number.
(But repaired means "fixed". I think I did the repair.)

It is a difficult one to plate being a relief B and missing the guide dot corner.
I think I found a close match to the recut lines at 29R1L.
Another good choice is 50R1L. I wish I had a high res copy of 50R1L to compare it to.