Information About US Stamps Naming

Hello all,

I was reading few US thread about initial US stamps and they were amazing, but one thing which confused me alot was nomenclature of stamps, it was like 23R3, 90L4

Please explain me what it is? And is there more letters like this used in naming? Give me in depth knowledge of this nomenclature as I'm new this area of collecting.

Thank you
Hemang

23R3, and 90L4 are plate positions for whatever stamps were being discussed.

You can learn about the US 1C 1851-57 plating (as an example) here
https://stampsmarter.org/features/S...Plating.html

Don

tl;dr

In brief summary, 23R3 means this stamp is from position 23 in the pane (the 23rd stamp counting from the upper left), from the Right pane of the sheet, from Plate #3.

So you can guess that 90L4 is the 90th stamp in the Left pane from Plate #4.

These early stamps were engraved by hand and even though all 100 stamps in the pane may look identical at first glance, there are tiny details that are different in each position, and some specialist collectors study the intricate differences of each position.

There are other letter suffixes sometimes seen depending, basically, on how long the plate had been in use - E for Early, I for Intermediate, and L for Late.

This is a big oversimplification. if you are intrigued for more information, Don's link above is a great resource.