US 6 Cents Postage

Wert, why do you think the smudge is a result of something that happened during production of the stamp and not some smudge that it acquired in the mail or sometime in the last 80 years?

Hi Philazilla

The area Don analyzed has a pinkish tinge to it..I cant see anyone in the post office having any colour on his/her fingers..Seems logical that the oddity was placed in the printing process...

Just my idea of what happened since I have seen this in printing class before..BUT remember, this happened over 80 years ago...We can never be sure what caused it...Just my educated guess.

Robert

Red grease pencils were commonly used in the US mail stream as seen on this stamp

Don

Interesting theory Don

I see 3 reasons why it might not be a red grease pencil smudge.

ONE - The colour of the stamp is standard, but the colour of the smudge has a pink hue to it..We know if you add a white colour to red/carmine it will turn pink as the 2 colours below show us.


SECOND - As we all are aware of, most cancels with pen/pencil usually end up with a signature/squiggly line/etc...The stamp you shown as an example has what seems to be an obvious squiggly line...The original stamp has a elongated dot a shown below.


THREE - The smudge has 2 attributes to it..The smudge starts and about about half way through has the same details as those a finger was moved as paper was grabbed...I doubt that the pink hue was caused by the red pen coming into contact with any sort of white ink.

I will stick with my original conclusion that it was printer caused...

We will just have to disagree; but if a mint copy of the stamp shows with the same smudge, I'll buy into your theory. I realize that you are a flyspeccer but with used stamps my opinion is that an extraneous marks like this is much more likely to be a post-production thing.
Don

How many times have we done that buddy..haha
Stay healthy Don..Have a great night.

Robert

My votes sides with Don.
U.S. clerks used all sorts of inks and writing devices on mail to get their job done.
Defective stamps found during production, marked as intended for destruction just don't get used.

I knew it would be John..

I'm voting for post-production.