Curious Markings On Back Of 1851 3 Cent Washington

Was correcting some crooked mounts in my us album and noticed these markings on the back of what I think is a 10. I bought it id'd as such more than 20 years ago and haven't questioned its id since. Casually compared to the other 1851 3 cents I have on and off cover it is the one with the clearest orange cast. Anyway, anyone recognize these markings? Significance?
Thanks
Greg

Hi Phillystamper,

Nice stamp! I plated it with the help of the Plating Wizard (http://stampplating.com/wizards/create), and it is from plate 0, sheet position 30R0, confirming that it is a #10A.

The two lines recut in the upper left triangle helped narrow down the list of candidate positions, as shown on the U.S. Philatelic Classics Society plating page below. It also has some significant curves in the left frame line.

(https://www.uspcs.org/stamps-covers...mp-plating/)

The first mark (star?) may be a symbol indicating the stamp was used. The second mark is likely a dealer's authentication/owner's mark. Dealers who did mail sales sometimes marked the back of their stamps to make sure they got the right stamp back if there was a return. I would guess that the numeral 4 could have been a price marking, as this stamp obviously isn't from plate 4.

Thank You Classic Coins! I had not found that site before, I'll probably spend way too much time trying to plate the 1/2 dozen 1851 3 cents i've accumulated! Fun! Yeah, I read that mark as a star too. I'd hoped they were some well known expert's or collector's marks, oh well. btw, It had one of those ancient handmade hinges on it that fell off when I took it out of the mount. How often does that happen?

The mark on the left looks like a 4 to me.

I can see that too, now that you mention it, dudley.

General plating question, If the plating wizard returns a huge number of possibilities, are other characteristics of the engraving like a gap between the bottom of the S in the lower label and the frame something to narrow it down? as shown in the example they have of 21L4?

Generally (nowadays, anyway), a star means that a stamp is mint/unused. Used stamps are often indicated by a circle (small letter 'o'). These are just symbols, though, and anyone can make them mean anything in their own paradigm. That's a pretty nice 10A you have there!

Different plating features (like # of recut lines in any of the triangles, inner lines running up too far, gash on shoulder, etc, etc, etc) are intended to narrow down the field of possibilities. Once the 'easy' stuff narrows the field, then the hard stuff happens - checking for stray marks, HOW far does the inner line running up, how straight/parallel/far are the inner lines from the outer lines, plate rust marks, etc, etc, etc. Step 1 narrows the field from a few 1000 possibilities to a few dozen-ish, and step two narrows it down to anywhere from 1 to a handful --- repeat Step 2 until you are down to 1. It is amazing how unstraight some inner/outer lines are --- looking for kinks or bends in these lines is the latest and greatest tool in determining positions. There are online databases of pictures of every position to which any stamp can be compared. It's a lot of fun for the detail-oriented fly-speckers among us.

Hi Phillystamper,

The gap between the letters in the label and frame may not be the best feature to look at when plating, as inking variations can make this gap vary from printing to printing for the same plate position.

mootermutt987 provided a great rundown on what things to look for when plating.

Following up on mootermutt987's statement about "how unstraight some inner/outer lines are," I rely heavily on the curves in the frame lines in my plating efforts, as these were all recut by hand on the plate with a cutting tool after the designs were transferred to the plate from the transfer roll. Because they were recut by hand, virtually every one of the 2600 3-cent imperforate positions has a unique look to it, like a fingerprint.

To help confirm the position of your stamp, I compressed your image to 10 percent of its original height in an image editor, and did the same with the Carroll Chase Smithsonian reference photo for 30R0 that is on the Plating Wizard site. Image compression helps show the curves better. I pasted these two images together for direct comparison, as is shown below. The left frame line has some very distinct curves.



When studying frame lines with compressed images, it's important that the stamp was not warped when it was scanned, as warping can induce unnatural curves in the scanned image.

We'd be happy to look at any other imperforates you're working with, maybe to provide feedback on your plating efforts. Also, I invite you to read and post in an 1851-57 imperforate topic that I started:

https://goscf.com/t/72775

I grew up in Philly (far northeast), by the way. Feel free to email me if you discuss the 3-cent imperforates more.

Mootermutt/classic coins Thanks for your help. I'm enjoying this. I started working on this stamp on a cover addressed to the wife of General Archibald McCall from her daughter in Jamaica Plains, Mass. After enlarging the scan and abandoning the S gap as inking flaw, I figured out the stamp has a lr guide dot and went through the 298 possibilities given it is a relief B, no inner lines etc and came up with 6 possibles that have the dot in about the same spot. 25r6,65r6, 62r8 and 86r8. I liked the 65r6 the most but trying your compression trick sorta eliminated that one. Here's the cover and the stamp with my compression.

Nice job narrowing down the candidates!

I think 86R8 is a match, based on the guide dot and the curves in the left frame line. Also, the right frame line on your stamp appears to get thicker about a quarter of the way down from the top, and this is evident on the Chase reference image.



BTW, if you don't have it, you can download the must-have Chase book a the link below:

https://www.uspcs.org/resource-cent...nic-library/

Fantastic, Thanks for the ID. And that resource link, there are a few interesting titles there. Now on to an unused example...