1861 3c Claret Vs Lake Rose

The two shades are next to each other in McClung's list. Any insight on how to distinguish between these two?

Good Luck on chasing the claret, if that's what you're doing-- very difficult shade to find, and a good one looks just like a dark red wine color.

These images look too much like each other, but in hand there is a striking difference between the Lake Rose and the Claret. The Lake Rose is much redder in hand than the claret.

My favorite Claret:


The Claret of 1863:


Lake Rose:


Both claret's were purchased and identified by Jack Daley, one of the best known shade collectors. The Lake Rose was purchased and identified by Mike McClung, who was first to ID the 54 shades in The Chronicle, the periodical from USPCS.

Hope this is helpful. Hope you have the stamps on year-dated covers, because if not, it's less accurate than a SWAG. One really needs year dates.

Ray

Hi Ray,

I like your second image, the "claret of 1863" with the patent punch cancel

Dave

Thanks Dave. That's a Buffalo, NY patent cancel. There is one very similar for Buffalo listed in Skinner & Eno, but this one isn't. Ray

Thank you Ray for posting. I own quite a few covers and off cover 65s. Date matching them is a challenge unless the year is on the cover somewhere.

What is your source for finding these shades? Do you know of any dealers that specialize in US classics shades?

Only the top right one has a grill. Are all the others #65, or are there any differences? https://www.stampcommunity.org/image-optimizer/

LB, I don't know a lot of other shade chasers. I'm actually working on other areas at present, but I've been looking at the shades and covers again now, to help a friend out.

There used to be 2 sellers on ebay that I bought many of my ID'd shades from. I bought a lot of covers from Mike McClung and Mike ID the shades on the back of each cover. He hasn't been active now for at least 10 years, and I understand there was a serious health issue.

The other seller was Jack Daley. I had a lot of correspondence with Jack and he taught me how to use Photoshop Elements with 9600 dpi scans of the small, darker part of the stamp directly under the upper left "3". Sometimes with cancels you'd have to use the "U" or "S" or the other "3". By looking at the actual pixels and the color of the wash behind the pixels, Jack could identify the shade. I never got to the point of being able to do this with all of the shades-- BUT I could look at the scans and know that the stamp in question wasn't pink. Unfortunately I had to upgrade my scanner, upgrades in technology sometimes is a problem, and it has been for me in scanning at 9600. It just isn't the same as it was.

So, I have about 1000 covers mostly in date order and some without year dates, and when you go through them in date order, the shades make sense-- you can see how wild the shades get in 1863 and 1864 with the addition of "Lake", and you can see how the shades are muted and warmer in "65-67". But even with the names of all of the shades, and even with year dates, it's still really, really difficult to identify an exact shade.

Hope this has been helpful, but I'm betting that it not. I wish you lots of success in chasing the 3c 1861-69 shades! Ray

@ray.mac This is helpful thank you. I appreciate your posts and your scholarship of the hobby.

Sharing this, in general, on my experience:

I have corresponded with Jack for a decade now and purchased several shade variants from him for my reference collection.

I have physical copies of Brookmans "19th Century" volumes, RH White's "Encyclopedia" and "Color in Philately" with the ISCC-NBS color plates, the Pittsboro "Specialized Color Guides" with the Munsell chips, print copies of the relevant USPCS journals, and various other color guides. The disappointing reality is that most of these publications are old and even high quality lithography still causes some color distortion versus the original stamp, however the print tech is getting better over the recent years.

I've auction purchased items that look in hand drastically different than the print catalog, and the website listing, and the description which seems to have been written by an enthusiastic but dubious marketer (especially Aldrich, Kelleher, HarvardMBA). Multiple expensive purchases that simply weren't certified to be what they were sold as. Rose pinks vs pinks, 63 ultramarines versus bright blues, 24c Washingtons, etc.

In fact, purchasing anything from a dealer who isn't extremely accurate and knowledgable here is a total crap shoot. HipStamp, ebay, dealer sites, whatever.

A quick online scan of "65 cert" will show you PF and Apex and PSE certs of shades that sprawl all over the range, all listed as "Rose". So I have no confidence sending mine off to any of them will result in anything else.

And as is tirelessly noted by the community in this forum, scanned images can be be distorted (viewing) by the calibration and color profile of the monitor its viewed on, which is often set to the users personal preference. Plus the scanner has optional settings to alter the image capture that can obfuscate the eye-observed color. Phone cameras don't even try to be accurate.

I'm familiar with the 9600dpi scan methodology that Jack used and the Adobe color separation technique. I have those scans for everything that I purchased from Jack.

My challenge at this point in my collection is determining objectively what the minute differences are between similar shades,
...without already owning multiple reference copies, and
...without specific descriptive language by the color namer for each, and
...without a specific color HVC from a specific color system for ANY of them. For example,

• Compare Brownish Red Rose to Brownish Rose Red?


• Compare Lake Rose versus Red Rose versus Rose Red, and describe the differences.


• What is the difference between Lake Brown and Brown Lake?


• What is the breakpoint between Light Brown and Brown?


• Or Pale Brown Rose vs Pale Rose Brown?


• And how brown is Brown, really?


• Reddish Claret Rose vs. Claret Rose vs. Brown Rose vs. Rose Brown?


• Salmon, Lilac, Coral, etc.

I understand the methodology McClung used to assign his names according to cover dates. I have lots of 65 covers. Including Apex certified Red Rose dated 1861, certified pinks dated in late 1862, and ranges of shades for any given 6-month period that fall outside of his date chart but are clearly not any of what is listed to be in that timeframe. So yes dated covers can help directionally, but there are many on cover exceptions and unexplainables which Mike acknowledges in his writing.

So why despite so much frustration do we keep searching for the needle in the haystack?

It's fun. :-)

It'd be nice to get a bunch of shade collectors together with some daylight or Ott Lights with all of our dated covers to come to an opinion consensus.

That would be a lot of fun….I'm in Tennessee if you're close…

I love this idea and have thought the same thing. I'm not close to Tennessee but I'd hop on a flight for it.

I'm up in New England unfortunately, but the very slight differences in color hue is very intriguing to me. This section in the collection that has most of the Washington 3 cents of this era are quite varied. If for any reason I find myself in the area I'll definitely bring along the album for you to check out

Oman, you're going to have a more difficult task if not near impossible in identifying the shades/hues of loose 1861's. You really need year dates. Good Luck, Ray

It sounds like the middle row would have the highest chance of success since most of the cancels have a visible date. In the end, for me it will be more interesting just to be able to identify what a specific shade is supposed to look like. Hearing differences between red, red brown, lake, pink, etc is hard to visualize without true examples of each hue, most likely seen in person. Having this knowledge will be interesting for the stamps that I would be able to identify in my collection (if possible)

From the scans, it appears the color called 'claret' by mcclung is called 'purple lake' of the 282a versus the 'claret' of 282.