What Qualifies As An Error Stamp And Does It Have Value?

I have a red Washington 2 cents stamp which is really off centre, part of bottom is cut off. Does this give the stamp a special value or is the defect not significant? Tia

Quick answer is that a shift of the perforations must be significant for there to be any added value (to people that like those things). The shift that you show is pretty minor, and pretty common for that stamp, so many people would value it as LESS than a better centered example.

A significant shift would show some of the stamp below, above, to the left, or to the right of your stamp. And that amount shown would be more than just a small line.

We'll see if anyone will post stamps with a significant perforation shift.

Sorry, just a poorly centered stamp. Common for these.

You are in the US so I will supply an answer for the US. There are two places which show US errors with the term "error" a term of art for philately:

Scott's US ERRORS Catalog.

https://www.efocc.org/Resources/Hot...AA_Cover.php
Above from the EFO Collector's Club website Resource page ( EFOCC.org ).

A 10% shift into the design becomes interesting to specialists, a 20% shift starts driving the price up.

I have a lot of misperfs of the "2 Cents" A140 design e.g. #499 but this is the only one that I have of the "Two Cents" A139 design (#332).


I agree the stamp in the original post is just poorly centered, not significant enough to be considered an EFO.

To answer the question in the title, an Error would be a stamp that is missing a row of perforations, or missing a color, or a color is inverted (part of the image is printed upside down). A misperf is not an error, they are usually classified as "freaks" (the "F" in EFO).

EFO. An "error" is a mistake in what the original production was supposed to be. Some portion of the stamp was produced incorrectly; wrong or missing colors, inverted positioning of an element, incorrect perforation gauge or missing perforations, all or part of an overprint missing or reversed. A "freak" is where every element is the correct one, but some element/elements got shifted to the wrong position. An "oddity" is a freak of a minor nature.