Deception Of Regummed And Reperforated Stamps

To qualify for a nosebleed grade both the frame and vignette centering should be taken into account.

I have not problem with slow plane etc as long as they are significantly shifted (not slightly tardy).

This was my ungraded MNH 524 that I paid $300 for. I would put it up against the Siegel 98's any day of the week.

Yes, definitely! That should be worthy of a 98 all day long, even from PF.

The horizontal perfs are a bit narrower then the vertical perfs. Also the bottom perfs seem to drift a bit, so that they appear slightly closer to the design on the right then they do on the left.

@rodgcam, that's a beautiful stamp. You got an amazing deal on it too! Cannot believe a dealer let it go for that price. Why would you not get a graded cert on it? When you or your heirs eventually sell it, you'll get much more with the cert. It will give any buyer confidence it isn't regummed or reperfed, and will set an independent standard as to whether it is a "95" (SMQ $1000) or a "98" (SMQ $2650). This is exactly what grading is for.

Don

Not sure it would matter to the centering software but the point of sharing the stamp was to show the most excellent vignette registration and how it impacts aesthetics. Kind of wish I had sent it for a grade but too late now. Someone else owns it. But I did make $ on it so

Thanks, Don

So Don's rectangle shows that recollector was correct about the right side perfs being closer to the frame line. Is that a guarantee that something is amiss with the perforations or can it happen in the normal printing and perforating process?

I grabbed one of Seigel's 98's and cropped one side. The perfs also run in (or out). If you understand how these were produced it becomes clear that these deviations are irrelevant so long as they are not dramatic. What matters is the overall centering. I imagine that the vignette registration would be a matter of the infamous "eye appeal".

Unless I have misunderstood, I do not see the kind of variance that your stamp had...
Don

The right side of the BOTTOM perfs are closer to the design then the left side of the BOTTOM perfs. That is never a good sign unless the same is true for the perfs on the opposite side, in this case, the top perfs. Perfs should always be parallel because of the way they were created.
To my knowledge, the only time this is not true is on the high value reds, greens, and silver tax issues of the mid twentieth century. They were produced in panes of four, and it is not uncommon to see one of the internal horizontal perf rows at an angle relative to the rest of the stamp. These stamps were rather carelessly produced, probably because the prevailing attitude was that only accountants and lawyers would ever see them, and not the general public. So no one really cared.

You will see the same condition in the Columbian's, Trans-Mississippi's etc.

My question and point are that where the perf line sits at one end vs the other end is not very relevant when it comes to assigning an overall centering value for grade. Unless you want to assign a grade 90 to one end of one side and a grade 98 to the other. Capiche?

So back to where we were prior to the tangent. I wonder if the vignette placement is taken into account when grading? Perhaps I should just call and ask the PSE/PF. I am curious about that.

Bart, could you ask someone at the PF?

Perhaps not, but it certainly would set off alarm bells and cause a lot of checking to ensure that the perfs were genuine.

I am wondering about grading software (which apparently some grading organizations use?) and these kinds of drifting perfs. I know that the software is simply determining the outer edge of the stamp design, determining the inner edge of the perfs, then calculating and comparing the four sides. One solution (and in my opinion incorrect) would be for the software to use math and average a side which had this kind of perf drift.
Instead the software ought to use the 'worse case' measurement in the drift which would result in a lower grade. If the drift was substantial, it would result in a much lower grade.
Don