Valuable Old Post Card?

In 2007 I purchased at an antique store 8 1¢ Liberty post cards for $1 each. 7 of them, like the one immediately below, were low value, 21 teeth, UX5s as I did not detect a watermark in the monogram.



But the one below, with 23 teeth, I believe to be a preprinted, high value, UX7a. However, it is much darker stock than the UX5s. Since Scott doesn't mention darker stock for this as it does on UX27C&D, is my classification correct?





*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

Nice find of the 23 teeth variety! While it has a premium catalog value, you just proved that little diligence and knowledge can ferret them out of $1 boxes.

Over a billion each of UX5 and UX7 were printed over a span of years and the primary workhorse cards of their era. There is considerable natural variation in the paper thickness and color, not to mention changes from storage over the past 140 years.

If you want to really get "into" postal cards beyond the simplified Scott level, you should consider the catalogs of the United Postal Stationery Society.

UX4 and UX5 have "Write the address..." while UX7 has "Nothing but the address..." below the US Postal Card banner. UX4 is watermarked with the small USPOD watermark on dark buff paper. UX4 has an ERP of September 14, 1875 and UX5 has a First Day of September 30, 1875 with an ERP of June 21, 1876. UX7 has an ERP of September 16, 1881 while the 23 teeth variety has an ERP of August 2, 1883. This, and much additional information is available in the UPSS Postal Card Catalog.

Note: ERP stands for Earliest Reported Postmark

Thanks so much for the info. Greatly appreciated!

jobi01, my 2014 Scott Specialized lists UX4's First Day as 9/28/75, while the UPSS Catalog has an ERP of 9/14/75. So the Scott Specialized is wrong?

A difference between first day of issue and earliest reported postmark. The UPSS catalog reports the first day for UX4 as "UNKNOWN". Perhaps you need to address your question to the catalog editors?