1895 8c Grant Wmk Question

Can anyone id the wmk's on these two Grants. Sanity check.







Thanks

191 USPS double line

scott 272

The one on the right is clearly an S.

The left one stumps me as I would expect to see more of the rest of the character seen or the beginning or end of either adjacent character. What letter is it, the you S P or S? I see part of the fat side of a vertical oriented that curves downward (didn't realize that before), like the U, so I would expect to at least see part of the upstroke, so to speak.

Just trying to learn.

my guess is the bottom of a P. There are only 9 letters per 10 stamps with this watermark, so one per stamp is about right. I puzzled on it, but figured this had to be it.

You should match the left one against a known "P" to see if it is an "I" and not a "P" The 8 cent exists with the "U S I R" watermark.

Yes, I saw that the USIR was a possibility but wanted an expert opinion.

Thanks for that spacing info. Ten stamps would be about 240mm. Divide by 9, and we get a character every 26mm or so. I know I am only ballpark, but I get it now. That is more than a stamps width for each character to reside in, all by itself. Does that sound right?

Definitely worth a certificate. I can't imagine it being either a you or a P.

But as I think this through, that was a vertical oriented watermark so it runs length wise. Wouldn't that mean more characters per stamp when running vertical, because the vertical axis is longer than the horizontal width?

http://stampsmarter.com/learning/Ma...ermarks.html
Don

Cool resource! And congratulations, jb!

before you get too excited, osn't that what the bottom of the P and the top left of the you look like in the double line USPS?

It might also be the top of a "U". If it is backwards the narrow half would not show on this stamp.It needs to be looked at carefully.

...and by the way, that's General Sherman, not General Grant.

Without a clear "I" or "R" forget about a cert.

It is very possible it is an "I" The top and bottom of the "I" of "USIR" are different from the top of the "U" and the bottom of the "P" of "USPS"