Greek 1947 500 Drachma Stamp - Orange?

I have a 500D Greek stamp as shown in the pic (not my stamp):

I have located the stamp on Stampworld however the catalogue shows a red stamp and the colour is stated as red. Mine is orange. I thought mine had faded but then I saw the same orange colour on examples from the web. Are these all faded or is the orange variety missed from Stampworld?

Thanks for your help.

This (Scott 513) is the "perfect storm" of color naming and differing results from scanning.

What is shown above is correct to my eye. In many catalogs including Scott, "orange" is a much yellower color. Scott also calls this "red" which to me it is not. Perhaps one could call it orange red or orange vermilion. Plus "red" can be anything from the color of primer paint to that of a classic US fire engine. In the end, the catalogs generally remain inconsistent in color names.

We've gone around and around on SCF on how online images/scans are not necessarily accurate for (say) color shades for many reasons. The Stampworld image is definitely off. If you search for this stamp elsewhere, you will find/have found other very red examples. But if you check other images supplied by the same sellers, you will find their images shifted toward red. So it's their scanning/scanner calibration that's off. And it doesn't take much to alter scanned colors.

Thanks hy-brasil. Your answer does segue into another question that I was going to post. I have already stumbled across the miriad of colours used to differentiate early UK stamps and was thinking I haven't got a hope of knowing what olive green was without a standard colour chart for stamps. Does such a beast exist? I know mycologists use one for fungi colours.

Thanks

For many years, Gibbons produced colour guides in various forms. I don't think they do so at present, but second-hand copies can be found on ebay et al. Bear in mind that Gibbons won't necessarily use the same colour descriptions as Scott, and that colours' primary use is to describe and differentiate within a set. Even within the same catalogue, a colour for a particular Australian stamp may not be same as that of a Fijian stamp, even though they may both have the same colour "name". Separating relatively minor shades of older stamps can also be difficult because the colours may well have changed over time - exposure to light etc.

Also note that just like stamps, the guides themselves change color over time. Most color standards companies (i.e. Pantone) assign a shelf life of less than 5 years from time of printing. Good quality printed color guides (or books) are incredibly expensive to produce and even the most costly have a useful shelf life of less than 10 years. You can purchase color guides made from either plastic or coated metals but the shelf life of these are still limited to <15-16 years. I assume that is why SG and other publishers, who understand the limitations with shelf life (sales numbers for our hobby), have moved away from producing them.

Color is one of the most challenging parts of our hobby, has the most misinformation (everyone thinks themselves an expert but true color experts are very rare), and as mentioned in posts above has absolutely no standardization of naming nomenclature. But this has never stopped catalog publishers and blissfully uninformed hobbyists from using colors as a means of identification.
Don

British "shades" require experience and even then almost always comparison.

As stated by others: each catalogue editor has his own colour definitions. Forget the SG colour key. Concise/Specialised, Commonwealth and Collect British Stamps do not always concur.

Take the Concise and put all the Prussian blue stamps together. You will see big differences.

To use the key: store it correctly, use it on solid-coloured parts of the design, prevent any other colour being visible, store stamps correctly and it only works with mint stamps, and use in the correct lighting conditions. So, it hardly is useful.

If you look at British "shades," also remember Collect British Stamps gives one "shade." This should be the cheapest. But when many printings exist, there will be variations. Even Machins exist in "shades." Connoisseur lists them, Connoisseur uses other colour names than SG, Deegam uses the names used by Royal Mail (Jeffery Matthews colours). SG hardly lists Machin "shades." Deegam lists them only if the "shade" occurs due to a production error.

Concise is a shorter listing of Specialised. So some specialised "shades" fall under a wider definition in Concise.

And then there is what Don writes. I write "shades" because it is a British philatelic tradition to speak of shades.

I have seen many posts by people using Scott colours for British stamps that are not even in the same universe.

Across countries names may differ even if they appear clear when taking them literally.

Very few people use vermillion as colour. Internet catalogues can be compiled by an international community of very and little experienced people that speak different languages. It is an accident waiting to happen. US collectors will call almost all pre-1900 purplish British stamps "purple." British collectors will call them "lilac."

To distinguish (say) "olive green", I feel it comes down to a relative difference between two color varieties of the same stamp that you have in front of you. Failing that, comparison with a lot of images you might find. With multiple printings, there can also be intermediate shades that may or may not be listed by catalogs. Those might need to sorted by specialists or experts with reference collections. Luckily for us, there can be simple, obvious color differences.

To drag you further down the rabbit hole, one must be careful about interpreting shades/colors of used stamps, more so than mint stamps. In general, used stamps have had a harder life than mint ones to varying degrees. So if a stamp is obviously toned, stained, terribly faulty, etc. we can't really trust the color or shade. There are also sometimes weird effects from chemicals/oxidation and fading. Further, some inks or their components are fugitive. One example is the 1883-84 Great Britain issue, where probably most existing used stamps have degraded colors to varying degrees. Until one sees bright and fairly fresh examples of both colors, you won't realize how far gone most of those stamps are in terms of color.

If you're a general collector, more familiarity with colors and shades will come with time as you accumulate more stamps.

When I first started to get more serious about collecting I purchased all of the color guides that were available and it drove me nuts because it was so, so difficult to arrive at a solid conclusion. In a lot of ways the catalog publishers did a disservice to the hobby by adding shades/hues to the mix but it was driven by dealers seeking to add value to the sell lists. Hard to argue a perf rate or watermark (well maybe not always) but ask two people about a color. Yikes. Carmine Rose or Rose Carmine?

Thanks for all the replies. I can see this is a can of worms that has been open for some time. As a new collector I usually only have 1 specimen in front of me so unfortunately it is impossible to to compare colours with just one stamp. I have encountered this same conundrum with coins and the use of terms such as smaller etc. Fine if I have both coin types in front of me, but usually I don't so am stuck with a coin I cannot assign to the catalogue. Is it better to select a colour guide recommended or used by most for a particular country such as the UK? Thanks

It probably comes down to what catalog you decide to use. They do mostly have shared color names and most stamps are not problematic like the Greek stamp above.

At this point, do you know the difference between red vs. carmine, blue vs. ultramarine, pink vs. rose regarding stamps? These names come from the inks used in printing. So for an interpretation, you need to go to whatever catalog you choose and compare your stamp with what they say is the color. Then compare with a different stamp reported to be the same color.

I agree with NSK and rodgcam, no color guide is perfect and will not necessarily match what you have perfectly. They are quite useless once you get down to specialist territory. I would say be aware of the (limited) color guides if you ever want one, but I think they will not be that useful to you yet. Plus, they're not cheap. Definitely avoid the Wonder color guide as it is quite useless for stamp color names.

For your coins, there are also more specialized works that would illustrate the different dies. So you may be looking for a reference for stamps with more detail than StampWorld provides, say, Scott or Stanley Gibbons. They may be available in the reference section of your local library. And both are general catalogs and are not the last word.

The question is always if the reference is worth buying vs. its utility. None should be considered absolutely perfect. So, it's probably best to just assume you have the basic listed stamp until you have further info. If you think you have found a fabulous rarity, it is 99%+ probable that you don't.

Thanks for the response Hy-brasil. At present, using the Stampworld catalogue, I only have a colour description and the colour that appears on the Stampworld cataogue, which being online, is host to range of uncertainties such as scan settings, monitor settings etc. No, I don't know the difference between blue and ultra-marine as what one web-page shows as ultra-marine looks more like blue on another web page. Hence my desire to get my hands on a colour guide that is a bit more reliable than the computer screen.
At present I am lumping stamps into general categories as, for example, I haven't yet looked into or got the correct equipment, for viewing watermarks. I do like to assign stamps (and coins) with the correct catalogue entry which is why I get a tad annoyed with (apparently) subjective descriptors. Not chasing rare stamps (or coins). Have been collecting coins long enough to know that, given the choice, the coin in hand will be the common one (although I do try and find out just in case!).