Can This Washington Green Be 544??

Is there any reason that this stamp cannot possibly be Cat. 544 1c??
The perforations are worn and uneven and even darkened with black ink so the gauge is not crooked. I tried to line up it's sides with 11.5, 10.5,10. None lined up as good as the 11.

I agree your stamp is perf 11, however it is the offset-printed Scott 525.

How can the difference be revealed ? 544 vs 525 ?

Read Stamp Smarter or invest money in a set of catalogs.
https://stampsmarter.org/learning/M...methods.html


Well-meaning suggestion….
You appear to be starting with the assumption that you have the rarest varieties. Stamps are as common as rock, imagine that you go into your back yard, pick up a rock, and want to ID the rock type. If you start with the assumption that it is a diamond can you see how it makes your process more difficult? Or imagine that you find a lottery ticket on the sidewalk, would you assume that it was a mega winning ticket?

Please consider starting with the assumption that you have the most common variety. It will make your ID process go much quicker (because you will find that you that have the most common varieties the overwhelming majority of the time ). This will also prevent alienating many of the people in this community who want to help you.
Don

This group is about love. I totally understand and that is why I ask about the stuff that I should look out for. I do not want to have a valuable stamp and due to fear I don't ask.

The U.S. definitive stamps of this era (the "Washington-Franklin" series, 1908-1923) are complex. As you are finding out, many of them look alike, but differ by paper (watermark), perforation rates, engraving differences, sheet/booklet/coil format, and printing method. In particular, the 1, 2, and 3 cent stamps were the workhorse denominations and were produced in HUGE quantities. It takes considerable study to master them through the Stampsmarter website, catalogs, etc.

This means that I have to be an expert to post. That type of knowledge is good but how can I master every US stamp? Also my collection were not random stamps but collected over years and kept by a fairly knowledgeable family of mine. As coins, the valuable ones are few and far between but I still need understanding with these type of groups because I'm sure everyone here would admit that most of the stamps look very similar' valuable or not.

No. Most questions here come from non-experts - or concerning areas they do not specialize in. That's why they have the questions. Fortunately, most U.S. stamps (especially the commemorative issues) have only 1 variety, thus ID is simple. The collective knowledge of the participants here is quite comprehensive.

My first post to this board several years ago was a question not fully covered by the standard catalog. I got told to go read the catalog. I later found the answer in a journal of a specialty society.

No, you do not need to be an expert first. However, it is better to say what you have done to identify the stamp first. Perforations, watermarks, paper type, printing type, etc. You did that but missed the fact that there are other perf 11 varieties of this stamp and those are very common stamps. Use the stamp smarter web site or a Scott US Specialized catalog to see all of the varieties in one list. BTW, offset printed stamps of this era look fuzzy/blurry compared to engraved stamps of the same design.