Any Newfoundland Color Experts Out There?

I'm putting away some new purchases and am having some difficulty differentiating between Scott #41 (violet brown), #42 (gray brown), and #44 (brown). There's some subtlety between these colors that I'm not seeing (color blindness?) ... they all look brown to me ! I think I've got all three somewhere among these five but am unsure. What's your guess???

canyoneer
I ran your stamps through 2 of my colour identification software programs, but came to the conclusion that time/water/moisture/sun light can affect the colour over time...Also my monitor, your monitor and everyone on here is NOT set to the same colour accuracy..This is hard when posting colours, without them in hand it is hard to classify.

Robert

Hey Canyoneer

from the upper left
It looks like stamp 1 is the violet brown
stamps 2, 4 and 5 are the grey brown (shades of the grey brown)
stamp 3 is brown

Trodent

Trodent has hit it pretty much on the colours..

Good eye trodent

Robert

Oh Robert...and you were doing so well there with your first response!
Don

Thanks everyone! My wife will be glad to hear that ... I had her non-philatelic eye guess the shades (she does have younger eyes) and her guess matched Trodent's. The top 3 were from an auction described as one of each shade (#41-#43). Trodent, does that software work off a color shown on a digital image? Where did you get it?

I have always said that the topic of colour is the hardest to explain. As the saying goes, 'colour is in the eyes of the beholder'

Chimo

Bujutsu

Hey Canyoneer. Did not use any software. Just my middle ages eyes, and also having great examples of each shade. I hope this helps

I just used your examples to match my collection.

Here are mine, The Dark brown is not listed(yet?)

Gray Brown

Violet Brown

Brown

Dark Brown



Trodent

I am not knowledgeable of this issue, but noticed some irregularities in the facial area. There are probably many more irregularities in other areas of these stamps as they were produced in the earlier years of production.

I believe that the fainter spots on the "Brown" stamp are due to a worn plate and that the "Dark Brown" stamp may just have surface damage.

Posted only as my observations.

I have an old book called "The Postage Stamps and Postal History of Newfoundland" by W. Boggs which is pretty good. It only describes two distinct versions of this stamp. First is 1880 as "violet brown (shades)" and second is 1896 as "deep brown". It's interesting in that the 1896 is listed as a "re-issue". According to Boggs, there were only 200 sheets of these "reprints" made. His description of this printing as:

"Printed from the same plates as the previous issues, and on similar paper, they can be distinguished by their brighter colors, clearer impressions, and yellowish, instead of white gum".

Somewhere along the way Scott (or some other cataloging entity) dropped the re-issue designation (for the brown) and split the violet brown into two colors (original violet brown + a gray brown). That's probably why the two 1880 colors have the same catalog value - no idea how many of each were printed.

Love the post. Great stamp all around. My 25 cents:

1. Boggs book is a bible (i have both printings), and a solid required book. Even the bible though has errors only discovered later as facts presented. We do know that this stamp is from 1880 and 1896 from cover cancels etc.
2. The stamp is almost 140 years old. In my view color scanning and determination is fun but futile (so I'm aligned with Bujutsu above)
3. The NSSC (Walsh) from 2016 indicates three colors : Violet Brown (1880) but also Gray Brown (1880) which is different than Boggs. A 3rd variant of Deep Brown (1896)
4. The first two are same value in all usages so I'd just pick a spot and move on. Doesnt matter
5. The Deep Brown has some incremental value in used and mint but again, hard to know without verification. On a cover this stamp does command more value. Not because of the color but because the cancel date does not lie and while not definitive it is pretty solid fact.

These are all the 1 cent 1880-1896 Scott # 41-45


This may serve as a basic color guide, I never determine exact colors on a computer screen.

Cheers