Help With F Relief On 1857 3c Perforated Stamp

Greetings all. I've been learning about the various reliefs associated with the 1857 3c perforated stamp and I'm hoping you all can help with the F relief. Chase's book describes the F relief as follows:

"At the top, the line defining the top of the white oval shows a tiny break squarely below the interval between the S and P of POSTAGE."

I'm having trouble seeing where this break is. Is it below the letters "S" and "P" in "Postage" or is it below the "S" in "U.S." and "P" in "Postage"?. I think I have been looking at the right stamps as the F reliefs either have guide dots or come from the bottom row. I have examples of those with decent impressions, I'm just not sure I'm looking in the right spot. There are two areas where I suspect it is and I've attached an image showing the locations. Hoping you all can tell me where it is.

Regards,
Harper1249

Harper I'm no help, when I became interested (obsessed) with the 1851-57 3c, I swore I would never go down the rabbit hole of these later perforated stamps.

Look forward to this thread though.

Hi Harper —

I believe that the break in the oval on the F relief that you are looking for is directly below the ST of POSTAGE. In other words, if you drew a vertical line between the ST straight down to the oval, that is where the teeny little break can be found.

I am away from my stamps and my computer for the Christmas holiday — only have an iPhone to work from — but later next week, I will post up a plating mat to provide a visual — and which will also be extremely helpful in separating E reliefs from F reliefs (which for me can often be a challenge.)

Regards // ioagoa

I am interested in what ioagoa will share as I have some of these and may learn more on the issue. His contributions are most appreciated.

Thanks Ioagoa. No rush but looking forwarded to seeing it.

Happy Holidays
Harper1249

Although I don't spend a lot of time studying the reliefs of the 3c perforated stamps, I do have a lot of notes and material on this subject, from friends. I have mats for these, however, I'll just defer to ioagoa to post those, as anything he has will be more up to date than whatever I have.

I do have something that I think will be very useful once the mats are posted. So I'm putting the cart before the horse, here, but - here are Dick Celler's notes to me (and others) on how to identify 3c perforated reliefs. [again - this will make more sense when you see the mats].





Enjoy.

This is great!! Thank you for sharing it.

Hi Harper (and any others who may have an interest) --

Here is some information about how to identify the A through F reliefs on the 1857 - 1861 3c perforated issue.

First up is the original email from Dick Celler discussing his procedure for figuring the relief. This is pretty much a repeat of what txstamp has already posted -- but I post it here anyway as Dick's email is relative to his plating mats.

Next up are copies of the hand drawn plating mats that Dick made up back in 1997. There is a separate mat for each relief. I wish I had better quality images of these mats -- as it is sometimes a bit difficult to see where Dick highlighted the mat -- but alas -- what I am posting here is the best I have. And thanks again to Don for hosting full sized images on all of these files enabling their posting here on SCF.

Following the plating mats, there are examples of actual stamps for each relief. There are 9 examples shown -- as for the A relief -- there are 2 examples -- one without, and one with, the repair to the damaged area of the transfer role. Also, for the F relief there is an example of a 6th row F (i.e., F6) and a 10th row F (i.e., F10) -- as there are very subtle differences between the two.

As an aside, there's only one place in the 6-relief 3c plates that I can think of where there are misplaced reliefs -- which would be 70-80-90-100R11i. Instead of C-D-E-F when they reentered the plate, they used B-C-D-E, and wound up with the top of an 11th row stamp in the bottom margin. As a bonus scan -- I am including a high resolution scan of the famous misplaced E relief that was pictured in the Sesqui book -- (i.e., 100R11i -- the stamp with the 11th row).

Lastly -- For purposes of full disclosure -- I do not own any of the stamps shown below. All of these images were given to me by Dick Celler back when he was teaching me how to ID the various reliefs.

Regards // ioagoa


Here is Dick's email on relief ID -- which, as txstamp noted, he (Dick) sent to a number of folks who had an interest in learning how to ID the A through F reliefs on the 1857 - 1861 3c perforated issue:




Next up are the 6 plating mats -- one for each relief (with the applicable relief being noted in upper left corner of each mat) --



















And here are actual stamps showing an example of each relief:

A relief without repair -- position 9L10E




A relief with repair -- position 1L11E




B relief -- position 15L11E




C relief -- position 25L11E




D relief -- position 77R11E




E relief -- misplaced -- 100R11i -- (showing the 11th row effect as discussed in the Sesqui book)




E relief -- position 45R11E




F6 relief (i.e., 6th row F) -- position 58R11E (showing a row 6 guide dot)




F10 relief (i.e., 10th row F) -- position 92R11E

This is wonderful information and the illustration of it are amazing. Thank you for posting this.

Great stuff Ioagoa! Thank you for sharing it and putting together the post. I'm definitely not ID'ing any of them in five seconds (except maybe the A's) so i'll keep practicing. I took off work the rest of the week, so I am going to do a deep dive into this material this afternoon and into the weekend.

Regards,
Harper1249

I have some images of stamps here which may be of sufficient quality for someone to try to identify the various reliefs from ioagoa's information. I thought The top left might be an A relief, however I am more inclined to think it is an E relief. Any suggestions or comments appreciated.

ioagoa - it occurs to me that the mats and basically everything you posted ideally should be on the 3c page on stampsmarter.
Or at the very least, a link from there back to this thread.

This is fundamental information for anyone to plate perf 3c'rs, likely not found elsewhere easily, if at all.

Great thread, great posts and great information.., I'm still not going down that rabbit hole…

ChipShot --

The upper left stamp in your image is definitely an unrepaired A relief. The damaged transfer is unmistakable, as is the abrupt ending of the oval line at the 7:00 position. Also, the side FL's end prior to the top of the stamp -- and there is what looks like it might be a GD at the top of the RFL.

The upper right stamp is a Scott #25 -- so produced from one of the imperforate plates -- and based on the strength of the BFL -- looks like either plate 4 or 8 -- or a bottom row stamp from plates 6 or 7. I would lean toward plate 8 based on the overall strength of the other 3 FL's -- but due to the "less than optimal" scan quality -- hard to be sure.

On the other 2 stamps -- due to the scan quality -- no way to form any preliminary opinion or offer any comments -- other than to say that the one at lower left looks like it could be either 26 or 26A (again very hard to tell) -- but the one at the lower right is definitely Scott #26.

Harper --

Happy to share this information -- as the more collectors who take an interest in the area of plating the classic US issues -- the better off for all of us and for the hobby in general. FWIW -- even after all the hours I have spent studying this issue -- I cannot ID the relief on any of these 3c 1857 - 1861 perforated issues in 5 seconds -- with the exception of the A reliefs and B reliefs (presuming that cancellation does not cover the critical areas), and -- when there is a GD showing -- the F6 reliefs. Otherwise, it usually will take me anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes to ID the relief. One thing that I always try to do after I have preliminarily identified a relief -- is to then use Dick's plating mats to eliminate all other possibilities. The most challenging for me personally are separating out the E and F reliefs -- which as Dick said in his email -- can be maddening.

TxStamp --

I am AOK if somebody wants to add all of these images to StampSmarter. Over the decades, Dick shared them freely with just about anybody who showed an interest -- and when he shared them with me, he put no restrictions on my sharing them with others. In fact, I think he would be happy if he knew that others were taking an interest in the 3c 1857 - 1861 perforated issues.

StampCrow --

I am sure that you have a few of these 1857 - 1861 3c perforated stamps laying around -- and it is just a matter of time until your curiosity gets the better of you. Looking forward to seeing one of your future posts asking for confirmation on a relief ID. Again -- it's just a matter of time (ha ha)!

Regards to All // ioagoa

I was thinking the same thing and Im willing to assist with putting any images/pages together. I even started sketching out ideas on how a page would look. I've got some ideas that are based on the other ID tools Don and folks have built for other series. I'll get them into a digital format and post them.

harper1249

ioagoa, thank you for your analysis. I am away from the stamps for a couple of more weeks but I have attempted to make a better image of the bottom left stamp and see if it has improved quality for your review. I am digitally challenged and hope to see this is improved and within the SCF parameters.


I believe it is postmarked Mar 9, 1859 for what ever that might contribute to the discussion. I also obtained the stamps in 1982 in Ohio. It does not appear that I made any significant improvement with the digital image. One thing is that the rt side frame line is very faint and I do not know if that is printing or inking or a worn plate.