Bought Stamps From A Collector From The 20-S, Stamps 594 And 596?

We are gaining no ground here. Why do you suspect that these are 594's and/or 596's?

Someone wrote 596 next to a stamp and then a whole lot of incorrect assumptions and a fantasy was born.

I never mentioned multiple copies, I think he has like one of each I have 62 folders and I dont know how many first day stamps..he knew his stuff and every folder has a stamp to match whatever scott he had, if he didnt have it he wouldnt write it down..

john, you thought the last to be a coil stamp. I flipped it with gloves onn and took pic green specks on the top one not on bottom

How do you know everything else he wrote down is correct? Just like with coins what is your process of identification of all the stamps including the possible 594 and 596.

Shakespear1,
I will clarify. In my post midway down the first page, I stated the stamp in the third image in your original post was a coil, Scott 597. This image, so there is no confusion which stamp I meant:



Note the straight edges along top and bottom - thus a coil. Scott 597. It cannot be anything else. The perforations along the left side are damaged from an affixer.

I'll stop here and let others continue this thread.

This is how every one of the 60 or so folders is arranged

Redwood, to answer your question..i have no process, thus im here. I came here looking for some help identifying .. im not assuming I have 596, or 594 but I would like to know about these.if I knew which one of these is 552 then I could use 552 to check against the others. but I have a ton of these folders to go through and I dont know where to start. is there

It's clear from those photos that the original collector simply labeled all the possible Scott major numbers for each design. For example, the 1 1/2 cent Martha Washington from the Prexie series: the collector labels them as "MARTHA WASHINGTON... SCOTT #805, 840, 849". Scott #805 is the sheet stamp, #840 is the coil perf 10 vertically, and #849 is the coil perf 10 horizontally.

The stamps shown below that label are all sheet stamps, so obviously all #805. There are no coils shown, so no #840 or #849, despite those numbers being included on the label.

The collector, when labelling the Fourth Bureau 1 cent Franklin, just included the rare numbers like #594 and #596 -- that doesn't mean there are any of those numbers, it just means those are a couple of the possible Scott numbers that share that design.

I think that the key to identifying these, and many more, is to first get yourself the perforation gauge which has been mentioned several times in this thread. Without that, all we can really do is to direct you to Stampsmarter.com. From looking at some of these pages, it seems to me that the previous owner was looking at the stamp design, and then saying that it could be one of a larger list, then they listed the various Scott numbers that it could be. They obviously had a Scott Catalog to come up with their list, which is what you should do if you want to continue in your stamp collecting adventure.

What the previous owner is NOT saying is that they actually had a 594 or 596 in that group. They only said that the underlying stamp design is the correct one for that group, and they were going to check in more detail later (I guess). It appears that they never got that far, or they just assumed they had the less valuable of that variety, and went onto other tasks. If you read through other threads, you will see that the people in SCF are very helpful, but they sometimes want you to learn the many steps involved in a correct identification. The first step is to assume you have the least valuable version, and then take the next steps to try and prove yourself wrong. Who knows, maybe you'll prove yourself wrong ... and find a valuable stamp. Get a perf gauge, go to Stampsmarter.com, and report back when you are able.

(Codehappy and I were typing at the same time.)

Hi Shakespear,
Stamp Smarter is the place to start, it has over 2500 pages, tools, and other features which would take a person a few days to read through. It is 100% free and non-commercial. No need to go buy catalogs or make trips to a library in the middle of COVID.

A tool like this one
http://stampsmarter.com/features/SQ...rank_ID.html
was designed to help folks learn how best to sort through the difficult W/F stamps. Other sections of the site like this one
http://www.stampsmarter.com/1847usa/1847Home.html
contain 'visual finders' which help folks quickly find all US definitive stamps.
Don

I measured the stamps with a perf. 2 measured 9 1/2 by 9 1/2. 5 were 10 vert and 10 1/2 horiz. One was 10 1/2 by 10 1/2..any shouts as to which these are.

Also...above in one of my pics I took a pic of the back of a stamp that looke like it had a green smily face on the back where I thought it had bled through. Is this green the green that makes it a flat?

plate printing?

Yes, it is. It is called "set-off" rather than offset, because "Offset" is a type of printing and the two names can get confusing. Using Set-off instead of offset clearly describes how the ink gets on the back of the stamps, when wet freshly printed sheets of stamps are set on the stack of other freshly printed sheets.

thanks...so what is the flat plate printed 11 by 11...537?