Show Your US 1851-57 Imperforate Stamps

Caper, nice cover.

Anytime I see a stamp with that gouged out URDB area I take a closer look. Plate 1L is loaded with interesting positions.
With your stamp, it looks like maybe a worn plate..? Any thoughts?

Hard to say Stampcrow. This is a pic lifted off the USPCS 3c Plating site, and aside from the depth of color both look similarly worn.

Compare to mine

Caper, I like your stamp more than the one on the plating site and it's on that nice cover!

Here's a sloppy looking stamp that I think was caused by too dry or too wet paper.
I wonder what others here might think

Like it Stampcrow! Top contender in the ugly 3c category.

Hi StampCrow --

On your "sloppy looking" stamp -- I would say paper was too dry.

Very generally speaking -- paper that is to dry will show missing specks of ink -- whereas paper that is too wet will look a bit like a blotter that soaked up too much -- appearing, in some extreme cases, as if the ink is bleeding out of the engraved lines.

I am away from my stamps today -- but when I get a chance, I will try to post an example of both an extreme "too dry" and "too wet" printing impression. At both ends of the spectrum there are some very striking looking stamps.

As a plating aid, the dry paper impressions are often, but not always, a tip off for stamps around the edges of the sheet -- which tended to dry faster than the interpane copies.

Regards // ioagoa

Excellent ioagoa, thanks!

This one looks like too dry and too wet... 2R7 so it's a border stamp.

Caper123 —

To me, your 2R7 looks like an over-inked dry print.

Note the missing specks of ink at top which are the classic telltale sign of the paper being too dry — while at the same time the plate was over-inked (probably because it was not wiped properly).

Interesting variety of impression. Thank you for showing it.

Regards // ioagoa

Changing the focus a bit. I was able to attend a show for the first time in a year! I got my first pair on cover, 6 cent rate from the west coast to the east coast. Very nice sharp impressions. Pretty good margins. Canceled in San Francisco. These were the reasons I bought this cover.

The first image is of the cover and then the seller's tag on the cover.




Below is a higher resolution image of the stamps:



The tag indicates 11As but when I plate them I can not get a match in the 11A plates -- in particular on plate 5L. So I try the early plates and [surprise] I plate these two as 88 & 89L5E! I checked these positions on plate 5L and I don't think they match. Note that 88L5E changes from profile B to profile A on 88L5L.

I am new enough at this to not be entirely certain I am correct. Appreciate expert platers review.

I like 88-89L5E.

Nice snag, banknoteguy! When I saw your first scan, before the tag and the commentary, I thought "Nice Orange Brown pair!" Then I saw the dealer's tag and thought, "Huh. Maybe it's a poor scan." The funny thing is that the cancel is June 1 (presumably, 1852) which is a fairly late usage of the 5e plate (I think). The stamps were made at least 6 months earlier. Definitely not unheard of, but there were newer stamps (#11) out there by then. Maybe they had been sitting in the PO drawer, unsold, for that long. Maybe they were sitting in the sender's desk drawer. Good for you for investigating the details of this pair and making such a compelling case!

Just for a moment after I was pretty sure of the plating, I thought Jun 1st 1851??? NOT. I think you are right Jun 1st 1852 or I suppose even later.

banknoteguy, Nice acquisition of the beautiful OB pair on cover! I agree with the plating.

Caper, following up on ioagoa's excellent assessment of your 2R7, here is what Chase wrote about dry printings:

Poor impressions due to dry paper are ordinarily distinguished by the fact that the ink is not picked up cleanly by the paper, resulting in a very "muddy" impression in which the fine detail is often largely lost. The ink often shows projecting irregularly into the parts of the design which should be entirely colorless, and further white spots appear in portions of the stamp which should show solid, or nearly solid, color.