Cape Of Good Hope, 1 Penny Red, What Color.

I have these three cape stamps 1 penny, but what color are they. The one on the left has a sideway watermark. I hope some one can help.

@nielsjust, could you, please, identify the catalogue you are using for reference?

It has been written many times: you cannot tell the exact colour from a picture on the web. At best someone can provide relative guidance. But even then, three stamps that look different may be in the same catalogues shade band. Also, note that someone using Scott is highly likely to give you different colours than someone using Stanley Gibbons. Sometimes it even goes so far that the colours may be listed by both but be different stamps.

I don`t have a catalog, which one is the best. I know that it is not easy to see the colors on a scan, but to buy a stamp with attest is expensive, when we are talking about rare colors, just to compare with my stamps.

An American using Scott will give you another name for a hue than an Englishman using Stanley Gibbons. The American may mention the hue that is the rare one for the Englishman, but that would be named the cheap hue by the Englishman.

Asking a worldwide community to name the exact colour, if at all possible, still will not give you an answer.

This is a minefield.

From the image they look like the 1863-64 issue, which can be confirmed by the presence of the anchor watermark.

Most probably, the stamp on the left is the deep brown-red, the middle stamp the brownish red and the stamp on the right the deep carmine-red.

Utterly fascinating stamps. It's easy to see why they've been, and remain, so popular

you says, that I can see it on the anchor watermark, is there another anchor watermark in the stamps from 1853.

The watermark bits for this issue would've been hand made, resulting in natural variances.

Someone far more qualified than me will be able to advise if any of the myriad of forgeries of this stamp also have forged watermarks