Right Vs Left Imprints

I was skimming the latest Kelleher/Rogers Sale on SAN - #5133, January 3rd - and ran across this description for Lot 3199:




The last bit intrigues me. Is it true that there are more Left side imprints than Right side imprints??? If so, can anyone explain why that is? Or is this just marketing Bull-oni?

I saw that too and scratched my head a bit over it. In my collection of Plate 8 stamps I have exactly 7 left-pane imprint copies and 7 right-pane imprint copies. According to Neinken the imprint on the right pane is half a millimeter farther away from the stamp designs than it is on the left pane, but whether or not there is data to show that this translates into fewer imprints captured by perforations on the right pane I do not know (Neinken does not address this).

A half a mm is pretty small, but it ain't 0. When you are at the last row of perfs on a sheet, a half a mm may make all the difference when it comes to seeing the imprint. It's not much, but maybe it's enough. Still, it would be nice to know if there are numbers to back up Kelleher's statement.

A PF search made it 15 items left, 12 items right. I only counted the captures, and only per item. So a pair or strip was only counted as one item. So it seems fairly equal although it is a small sample size.

Looked at the 4 I have, 3 left, 1 right.

Looking through Siegel Power Search for sales of Scott 24 with imprints I see little evidence that the right is less available than the left.

It is somewhat interesting that on all Ty V/Va plates: 5, 7-10, that the right imprint is about 1/4 to 1/2 mm farther out. So this difference is not limited to plate 8.

I'm pretty sure there was a chronicle article maybe 6-8 years ago about imprints on the Type V plates. Perhaps that article was used by the auction house?

http://chronicle.uspcs.org/PDF/chro...47/21451.pdf

I believe this is the article. Thanks, Winston.