Need Someone With Some Experience In Plating Penny Blacks !

Hello everyone !
I am learning how to plate Penny Blacks and criteria to identify them (the plates). I watched some videos and I visited several sites, but I'm still running out of informations. I heard that it's possible to identify plates only with the check letters in the corners. I also heard that it's possible to identify plates without any books. Can someone with some experience tell me the criteria of the check letters for each plate ? If nobody can do this, can you tell me the criteria for each plate (not only the check letters) to identify them and tell me where did you take all your informations ? Thanks,

CS

There have been at least four posts related to this in the past two weeks, and I posted the link below:

https://www.maltesex.com/plating/

TIP: The forum search engine is a massive resource. Most topics have been discussed before, many at great length.

Yeah I know this site that's pretty a good one, but I don't know how I can use it to learn all the criteria of each plates. Could you explain me how you use it to identify plates ?

You asked:




I gave you a site that has images (Nissen) of every penny black from every plate searchable by corner letters. The front page has this:



The front page tells you what to do:



I don't know what else to tell you.

Oh that's ok ! Thanks ! I'll try to use the website correctly to have more informations !

This website is pretty useful, but how do you want I do the difference between a plate 4 and 6 only with a scan picture on a website without knowing the criteria at all ?

Hi CS,

The penny black was printed in sheets of 240 stamps, each with its own check letters in the bottom corners.

The letters in the top left hand corner of the sheet are AA and in the bottom right they are TL. These were punched in by hand and so have variances (ie: the location and angle of each letter within the square they're in) which enable us to plate them! So, first row AA to AL, second row BA to BL etc etc.

The links rogdcam has provided for you have images of every check letter for each plate grouped together (so, 12 images: the 11 plates plus the second state of the first plate).

There were a very small number of errors when I was last looking at that site and they might have been corrected by now. The site should have the correct images there somewhere!

Anyway, to help you and others, I found this image ages ago (2016 apparently!!!) but I have long forgotten where it came from:



Most of the time you'll be able to easily work out which plate a particular stamp belongs to.

So you mean that I can identify plates only with the website rodgcam gave me just in seeing the check letters in the corners ?

Yes that's right CS. It's much cheaper than buying the literature, which would run to hundreds of dollars I'd imagine!

Yeah ! And you only use it to identify them ? You learned all this with only this site ?

Yes and yes Captain Stamp

Absolutely awesome ! Thanks for the informations !