Used Scott US #317 With APS Certificate. Thoughts?

Hi everyone,
My father and I would like to get some feedback on this rather interesting stamp. We have come into possession of an allegedly used Scott #317 on a small piece that has an APS certificate from 1964.
We have never seen or heard of a real used 317 and we are skeptical of this stamp and would like to get some thoughts. We are well aware of the trickery trimming 304's and we have a lot of 304's in our collection, but no 317s other than this one. We plan to contact APS as well to see if this matches up to their records and if it does we will likely send it out for more opinions.
Our thoughts:
- We have examined the stamp under magnification and we don't seen any evidence of a trimmed 304, which would be our first reaction to a 317. The width of the stamp appears correct. Everything looks genuine, but we are not experts.
- The condition is remarkable for a stamp this rare - we are not graders, but the centering is amazing and it looks to be of a finer grade
- We are not familiar with the certificate of this era, but you can see the name of the submitter for expertising – he is well known at least to us. The certificate is water marked, which I can't pick up with the photo of course and the APS is embossed. The certificate smells old and if I keep unfolding it, it will come apart due to age. There is no question the certificate is old.
- The piece was hinged on the back, not on the stamp, but on the piece so it was in someone's album at some point

Questions:
- Does that certificate look genuine? This is the biggest question in our minds. We are definitely going to ask APS, but wanted to get some others thoughts
- Does the stamp look genuine? Probably impossible to tell from this photo right?
- Scott has no value for this stamp, but they do have a dash, which indicates that a known example does exist right? What would be the value of this stamp if it is genuine and how could we even ballpark it? It seems that this would be a very unique stamp and rather difficult to value?
- Have any used 317's been authenticated or sold? It is our understanding that the 317 coils were not put into circulation? We cannot find any evidence on the internet of used 317s.

Thoughts?

Super interesting item and cert. Personally I would only treat the certificate as provenance or as a neat item to have. It would need a new cert regardless.

Pretty cool cert #1638.

The "certificate is not valid. A genuine certificate would have an image of the stamp attached with an embossed stamp through it tying it to the certificate. The stamp itself is too well centered for the issue. Whomever faked it should not have strove for perfection.

I believe the signature may be Fred Noske from Milwaukee and was with APS at this time and Herman Herst was a well known stamp dealer.

Given that the issuing of certificates goes back to the 1890s, when did the practice of including a photographic image begin?

I would contact the APS directly and inqure if they have records on that specific cert number. The oldest APEX cert I can find a picture of is dated 1980, at which point they included a photo of the item on the cert itself. Given that this is 16 years prior, it could be that this cert predates that practice, if genuine.

As others have mentioned, it would need to be re-expertized regardless.

The cert appears genuine. I have two from 1935, #576 and #591 and they are almost identical, with only a slight difference in wording. The biggest difference is that the perfs are on the left instead of the right, which leads me to believe that this is the other half of what must have been a two part document anyway (just as today's PF certs are). So the submitter gets one and the A.P.S. would keep one.

Note that there are 2 questions here: 1) is the certificate genuine; and 2) is the certificate correct? The certificate may be genuine and wrong.

I strongly suspect that it is wrong, but only the first question can actually be answered from these scans. We would need MUCH better scans of the stamp to answer the second question.

OK, some of the comments here do not add up. APS issued it's first PHOTO certificate in 1903. As you can tell by the CAPS it had a photo sealed to it. In the late 1950's the APS came to an agreement with the Philatelic Foundation to have the PF expertise the more valuable stamps that were submitted. These certificates had, wait for it, photos attached. It only is logical. Right? Can anybody scan and post their 1960's APS certs that have no photos attached?

Think about this. A used Scott 317 of immense value and of which there are no recorded sales at Siegel and zero certificates as genuine ever issued for by the Philatelic Foundation pops up with a non-photo APS cert which just happens to also have Herman Herst's name (a famous and legendary stamp dealer) inscribed as submitter. What are the odds people? Come on now.

My two certs from 1935 do not have photos either. They do have the signatures of Eugene N. Costales as chairman, and J.M. Bartels and George B. Sloane as the others. These were giants of philately in the early to mid twentieth century, and as each one matches on both certs 2 months apart, and each was submitted by a different entity, there is no reason to doubt them being genuine.

So from 1935 until 1964 the certificate numbers only increased from 591 to 1638. Really?

My opinion--It will not re-certify. Even with this resolution, when the image is displayed on a 32" monitor and zoomed, I see partial perf holes at the left and right. In addition, the cancel bars on the left are not continuous from the stamp onto the piece and the curve alignment of at least one bar is off. Someone found a jumbo 304 on a piece, soaked it off, trimmed it, and reaffixed it, spacing it apart from the cancel bars on the piece in an attempt to make it look like the curve alignment was correct.

And maybe they had access to an "APS Board of Examiners" seal from some other organization named APS or even ordered one themselves.

Why is there two different posts on this? http://goscf.com/t/80925
Something weird going on?


Peter

Very possible. A check of PF certs will also show that the numbers during those years were fairly low. Most people did not get certs, even for high ticket items unless there was a real reason. The idea of sending items has increased significantly over the last 40 years.

And of course there were far fewer items that might need a cert at the time, even without the possibilities of grading.