sheetguy2,
Yes, I did see the damage on the right stamp of the pair, but no I did not see the nibbled perfs at the bottom of the left stamp. Thanks. I thought that the perfs cutting into the design was just bad centering, I did not notice that the perfs were also short/nibbled. And the single stamp could have a diagonal crease which would also affect its value.
Never Hinged on these super early stamps commands a big premium. I agree that in most cases the same collector that demands NH would never touch a stamp with faults, but I have seen many dog-ugly dollar-value Columbians that are NH and selling for huge prices. Makes no sense to me, I prefer a VF LH rather than an average NH, any day of the week.
The other thing though, these specimens aren't just NH, the gum (assuming from the provenance they are genuine OG), the gum is spotless post-office fresh. If you look at all the other "NH" 24's listed on
ebay, the gum is brown, spotty, mottled, just not pretty. From the photos, the gum on these 3 specimens appears to be a condition rarity. I said earlier that I would not pay a NH premium for a lousy-looking stamp, but in this instance I would, just to have a reference copy of what 1860 gum could/did look like.
Maybe I am wrong to be so enamored with the shiny gum on that first photograph, but really, if it were mine, I might just mount it face down so that I could look at the pretty gum all the time instead of the ordinary frontside. :-)
Posted 08/13/2024 7:51 pm
