388 Paste Up Single ? ~ Opinions Please...

Faked from 375, perhaps?

I dunno...I can talk myself into a "possible" #388. Assuming the watermark is correct (single line and horizontal), you could fake this by altering #375 or #384.

To get from #375: you would have to trim sides and create a paste-up pair. The top line had definitely been trimmed or altered...but each stamp in a paste up wasn't always the same height. Could someone have tried to cut that edge by hand to make it more match up with the other stamp? If it was done for fraud, they did a pretty poor job.

To get from #384: you could find an already existing paste-up pair (384h), and add perfs. But the perfs look ok to me.

Also, I've heard the #388 color is distinct and brighter shade (hue? Color? Can never keep that straight). Your stamp does seem to be usual color--a brighter "strawberry" red. But even if I saw it in person, I couldn't confirm right color for you.

There are many more qualified and experienced than I on here. Hopefully theywill chime in. If I had this, I would send for cert.

I'll toss this one out as a possible 354 paste-up single, but I have my doubts

The "388 paste up single" by the OP is a non-starter because of the curved top margin and the pastel color. Some 388 coils were auto wound products of the new coil stripper associated with the Stickney Rotary press still under development. Hand assembled coils would be expected to show width differences at every paste up. Auto wound coils were a uniform width except for the row at the top or bottom of the web. An 11th knife was added before the transition to perf 10 flat plate coils. Lack of a center line suggests that the stamp is from a booklet with a vertical watermark or from a 384 sheet with perforations added. The color of a 388 should be expected to be deeper, but not the bright carmine seen on fakes made from auto wound imperforate coils.

The 354 single could be genuine. The edges may be parallel enough to be genuine, but a 1200 or 2400 DPI scan would be more definitive. Because the scan had good metadata, it was possible to verify that the perforations were 12-66 and that the deviation between the top and bottom edges was close to the 0.001" (0.025 mm) criteria I use as a test for genuine flat plate coil edges. The bottom edge appears to be more sharply cut than the top edge, but direct examination would be required. Because imperf 4 cent horizontal coils were not available, most fakes fail because the top and bottom edges don't match. Finally, the perforations on the right side do not match as closely as I would like to the left side perforations. Direct examination of the perforations on the right side would be needed.


The bottom line: Some fakes are more dangerous than others.

Thanks Clark. So I have a maybe. Unfortunately a 1200 DPI scan of the whole stamp would end up over the size limit for posting. It cats $200, but before I consider sending for a cert, does the paste-up aspect significantly lower the value?

Thanks Clark for the info. Eyeonwall--I personally don't feel that paste-ups detract that value. In fact, I prefer them many times since it represents part of the printing process for these coils. However, since I can usually get paste-up pairs for cheaper than than other pairs, I suspect the market in general considers them to be of lesser value.