Help Identifying USA A140 Washington 2 Cent

Hi there,

I'm trying to identify this 2 Cent washington. It believe it to be an unwatermarked 11x11 perf rotary press. Following these characteristics on a few different stamp identifying tools leads me to Scott 546, however the sizing doesn't match up which leads me to believe I have gone wrong somewhere along the line.

Hoping someone with more knowledge and skill can steer me in the right direction

You are correct that you have gone down the wrong path. The lower ribbons lack the extra shading line of a type III, thus it cannot be 546. (Nor any of the offset printings, as it appears you have correctly determined.) While it may sound odd, an image of the back side is often very useful, as ink set-off from the adjacent sheet in the stack on flat plate printings is typical on the ack side of flat plate stamps, and not so with rotary.

That would leave 461 or 499. The single line watermark can be difficult to confirm when only a small portion of a letter may appear on a stamp. The odds lean heavily toward 499, without a watermark.

The straight edge at right strongly suggests a flat plate printing, either sheet or booklet format. Booklets are a different can of worms, which Scott treats poorly. Paper has a directional grain which expands/contracts differently when dampened/dried during printing. Sheets and booklets were printed with the paper turned 90 degrees from one another, thus the image area of stamps from bookets will be slightly shorter and wider than the same Scott #'d sheet stamps. Scott does not cover this adequately, so measurements can cause confusion.

Thanks a lot! Very informative and helpful, I will try and determine if there is a watermark present or not