Color Question On 30c Inland Exch - R52c

I'm organizing a set of revenues and I've come across this color oddity. The stamp on the left is the usual lilac color - many like this. The one on the right is bluish - quite different - but no other color listed in Scott. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Shades on first issues changed a lot over time. There was a deliberate effort to make the dark shades lighter and the light shades darker in an effort to combat cleaning and reuse. Remember, the average worker was making perhaps $3 a week, so even 5, 10, 20, 30 cents was real money to most people. Plus these stamps are 150 years old at this point, so some conditional changes are likely to at least some examples.

Makes sense - I guess there are too many shades to try to catalog them all - can I call this one aqua lilac? ;)

The right shade is very common too. I would call it a grayish lilac or just a dark lilac.

You should check that right stamp for silk paper, too.

You will see any number of shades on R52c, including grey, brown, violet, and blue.

See examples here: https://revenue-collector.com/cgi-b...t&Scott=R52c

Any of the 1st issue stamps with any amount of violet in it will exhibit great variation in color (R20, R21, R22, R51, R52, R80, R84).

To be sure, there is variation in color in ALL of the 1st issue revenues, due to quality control, paper composition, etc., but where most are variations in saturation or lightness/darkness of color, the violets are much more unstable and thus create a wider gamut of color.

I like those examples - interesting - thanks

Regarding silk paper, I did some spot checks. The only one I found so far is an R118. No silk paper listed in scott - ignore?

R118 is a second issue, which only comes on silk paper. With a lot of threads.

rlsny, see my reference page on 1st issue silks (vs. 2nd and 3rd):

https://revenue-collector.com/1stis...papers.shtml

Yes, I saw that. I'm learning - thanks