Is This Scott #18 Reperfed?

Wondering if the guide line down the left side is where the sheet of 200 was cut into 100 count panes. (I think that's the way they were printed, but not sure.) This should naturally be a straight edge meaning a reperfed job. Looking to get schooled.

Neinken indicates that there are no known plate 12 stamps perforated down the centerline, and I am unable to locate any.

edit: That is clearly the centerline.

41R12 looks like a potential plating for this.

edit: I would certainly vote reperforated at left.

To my knowledge, there are never perforations on vertical center line flat plate stamps of the 19th century, that is always where the sheets got cut into panes. Later in the 20th century that changed.

You get some interesting variants, especially with the perforated early (formerly imperforate only) plates. Some of these had centerlines a long way away from the design.

Observe Plate 1L of the 1c stamp (#23), and Plate 7 of the 3c stamp (#25).

These have the vertical perforations on the side of the stamp adjacent to the centerline, but not "on" the centerline.

Later plates tended to have centerlines very close to the design, and no vertical perforations were applied, thus creating 1-side imperforate.

There are definitely some #24 Plate 5 stamps that are perforated down the centerline itself.

I think there was a point on plates made well after perforations were in play (1857), where Toppan Carpenter, at least, made the panes close together and quit even attempting to perforate the centerline, or make stamps perforated on 4 sides in this odd scenario.

It appears as though the 1857-ish timeframe where perforations were new, provided some exceptions to the rule of no perforations down the centerline.

No time for pictures now....sorry.

edit: There are other 1c & 3c plates perforated down the centerline - I'm pretty sure I recall that. The practice ceased somewhere maybe around 1859 or 60, or so. I think Winston has studied this in some detail, maybe he can jump in.

On the other hand, that is the most realistic and authentic-looking row of perfs I've ever seen a supposed reperfer create. Most reperf jobs are painfully obvious due to their regularity. This does not look even remotely like any reperf I've ever seen.

People who reperforate stamps are like people in any profession. Some are very amateurish, and some are very professional. Some even gauge correctly, but do not have pressure ridges, or have edges that are too sharp, or holes that do not quite match the other three sides.

The OP stamp is from plate 12. The EDU of plate 12 is late January 1861.

Toppan Carpenter were done with perforating down the centerline well before 1861.
- I'm pretty confident in making that statement, after thinking about this some more.

This interesting thread prompted me to review my One-Cent Blue collection with an eye on center-line copies, which I had never done in an organized way before. For Plates 5, 7 and 8 I found center-line copies both with and without perforations on the line side, the former being fewer in number than the latter (which agrees with Neinken's statements). I found no perforated center-line copies from Plate 9 (Neinken claims in a footnote that these exist but are "exceedingly rare"). Plate 10 had no center line but I have a few examples showing perforations between the panes. As txstamp has said, if the Plate 12 OP stamp here has genuine perforations along the center line it would be a first.

dudley - thanks, that's good information.

So the current EDU for Plate 10 is May 5, 1860.

That basically seems to bracket the "occasionally perforated centerline area" time-frame to 1857-1860, with 1861 and beyond being no-centerline. At least none that we know of.

Does not (to me) appear to be re-perforated.

So, back to the OPs question, is this a unique item, or a good (re)perf job?

I've stated my opinion, which I'll stand by, unless disproven, but other thoughts are clearly welcome.

dudley - do you have any #24s or #26s on or off cover, that you can date to an 1861 (usage) that show the centerline, with perfs? - I will check my stash as well as soon as I get a chance.

Of course the problem is they could be left-overs from an earlier year's printing .. but it might be a useful datapoint. It would likely have meaning if there were a lot of them, but if only one or none, then my mind would remain unchanged. I cannot say that I've seen any 1861 use of a perforated centerline stamp, but it is likely that one or two earlier-printing stragglers are out there.

edit: I've looked at a lot of plate 12 centerline stamps now - all imperforate.

I think we can agree that the left side is (poorly) (re-)perforated. I'm not even sure if the horizontal perfs have not been "prettyfied" along the job...

tx, I'll take a closer look.