Difference Between Printer's Waste And Expensive Errors

I have a US stamp that expertized (within last 5 years) as a legit error stamp, but Scott says is printer waste and refuses to list as a genuine error or provide actual detail. They said spacing is not proper. It is a modern imperf. The stamps sold for over $2000. At this point it is semantics. I don't believe it is waste. Scott is wrong, and the experts are the ones I trust. There will always be differences of opinion. That is collecting.

What is even more interesting is this lot/stamp was promoted by Linns.

Note that those two Christmas stamp opinions from PF are for different stamps with different origin stories (1981, 1991), not two copies of the same stamp that got a different prognosis from PF.

Here is an article from Linn's asking a similar question about an imperforate 1979 Christmas stamp "Is this an error or printer's waste?"
https://www.linns.com/news/us-stamp...-waste-.html

John Hotchner says "There has been suspicion ... that some of these errors came from printer's waste. ... the missing colors are listed by Scott as 1800a (green and yellow omitted), and 1800b (green, yellow and tan omitted). At least some of these error stamps are documented as having been purchased at post offices."

An imperforate of this stamp was reported to John, which he and another expert believes to be printer's waste. "It is now up to the Scott editors to decide whether to give this item a listing, or a note, or to ignore it altogether". In my 2024 Scott it seems they have decided to ignore it.

Scott can say what they want. They are a poorly run company at this point barely publishing factual info. At one point they really reviewed listings. I have a genuine 2544AVAR. If they can't back it up, and an expertizer and my own review says otherwise, then they are printing fiction.

Part of what you pay for with a cert is the backend research. Maybe they did at one time, but I have proper proof and the stamp came from a PO and PF agrees. If I do sell my copy it will be listed not as PW and have a real cert attached. That is what matters.

So instead of yelling into the forum, here are a few questions:
When you say "the stamp came from a PO", where are the other stamps? Surely you don't think a PO sells a single stamp cut out of a sheet to a customer, and then what with the rest? Did you buy the stamp or did your seller buy it? If the seller "organised" the stamp, would he say "I bought it at the PO" or would he say "Ok I happened to pass a recycling bin and in the paper trash there was his stamp" ?
Would the seller admit the the second suggestion if we all tortured him?

So many questions, so few answers. Printer's waste has always been and will always be a contentious subject as pw often is a gray zone.

2544A is the $10.75 space shuttle issue, right? Yes, my 2024 Specialized says imperforate examples are believed to be printer's waste. Like drkohler asked, what documentation do you have that it is not printer's waste? A post office receipt? A contemporaneous article in Linn's or other media announcing the discovery and where it was purchased?

Two things can be true at once, the PF can certify that the stamp is a genuine article with no trace of perforations or blind perforations, but without additional knowledge they cannot offer an opinion whether it was a legitimate error that escaped the BEP and was sold at a post office, or if it leaked through the back door as printer's waste.

Sometimes they can make the call and give the opinion that something is printer's waste if an imperforate stamp has no gum and is wrinkled, it is more likely to be printers waste. If it is pristine NH it is harder to make a case either way.

As for Scott's opinion on the 2544A, I found a Cherrystone sale from January 2020 that offered an unlisted imperforate pair of 2544A as well as unlisted imperforates of 2950 Florida Statehood, 2983-2992 Jazz Musicians, 3001 Naval Academy, 3099 Big Band, etc.

My guess is that the Scott catalog editors saw that all of a sudden a treasure trove of previously unreported imperforate errors from 1995-1996 show up in a single auction in 2020 and surmised they most likely came from a single source inside the BEP as printer's waste, rather than a very lucky postal clerk or post office customer obtaining them all over-the-counter without ever announcing their discoveries to the press or to the catalogs for over two decades.

As my logic professor in college might say, having a PF certificate is necessary but not sufficient to obtain a new Scott catalog listing.

Do you have contemporaneous provenance (from the mid 1990s) for the discovery of your imperforate, or did it come as part of the circa-2020 discovery? Do you have any information about the origin of other imperforate 2544A's in the marketplace? Did any of them come from a post office purchase, or did they all (along with that other batch of 1995-1996 imperfs) come from the estate of a BEP employee by any chance?

parcel - my sarcasm detector is in the shop

zebra - all those were printed by Ashton Potter, not the BEP, but your point about them all showing up at once years after they wee issued is valid. Likely either printer's waste or archive proofs.

I just checked out the brand new 2025 Scott Specialized Catalogue from my
local library and noticed that 2544 and 2544A were printed by Ashton-Potter (USA) Ltd.

Interestingly many years ago a co worker told me that he was previously employed
at the Ashton-Potter plant in the late seventies when AP was still a Canadian
printer contracted by Canada Post.
When I asked him what it was like working at a Security Printer he said
What security?
He claimed that it wasn't very difficult to get stuff out. Not that he did anything.

I'm not into collecting errors but I have noticed there are quite a few
Canadian ones in the last 50 years and the Ashton - Potter printed stamps
had more than the Canadian Bank Note, British American Bank Note or Lowe-Martin.
That doesnt mean I believe they were all smuggled out the back door.
Maybe poor quality control or Canada Post wasn't too fussy in what AP
sent them.

Apologies for the oversight and thanks for the quick correction from not one but two fellow board members. I should have simply said "the printer" rather than calling out the BEP since I didn't bother to check who the actual printer was. Interesting to hear that anecdote about the possible lack of security oversight at Ashton-Potter.

It is all too easy (and tempting) for a printing employee to remove some waste product, slap it on an envelope and mail it to themselves or a relative/acquaintance. Without the stamp on full cover allowing for a thorough CSI type review I don't see how an absolute determination could be made that it was an error that escaped detection.

As I think I said earlier, the market and greed can influence how one sees the subject. Russia has scads of "errors" that can be nothing other than creations for the stamp trade. Triple misaligned impressions with one inverted comes to mind. No way this is an error. It takes effort to screw up to that level. On the market and in specialist catalogs the printers waste facet is ignored and people pay up for these things.

A few years ago, Spink sold the "Hermione" collection of (chiefly) twentieth century France. A number of lots included extravagant misperforations. It beggared belief that anyone on a post office counter would not have noticed these - they cried out "stolen from the bin at the printer".

If you do a pfsearch for 2544 some certs mention waste and others don't.

We will never really know. People making generalizations without fact are just that generalizing.

My cert is good and when I do indeed sell, the clean recent cert will back up the reality. Not sure what else a collector can do, but their own due diligence and provide the backing data.
Cite the lot, cite Linns, any efocc article, and the cert. Cherrystone I believe acted honestly in their sale of 2544As and whatever outstanding quantity is in the wild "is what it is". At some point ya either an interested buyer or not. Not hard to believe perforations didn't happen on a rando sheet. Has happened through philatelic history.

Just because a postal clerk should have noticed it, doesn't mean it wasn't sold over the counter. Even though they aren't supposed to sell them, they simply might not care or they might sell it to a favored person. I know of cases of the latter. I also know cases where the clerk bought them for themselves.

There are many British missing phosphor and imperforate errors. It is not strange that quality inspectors at the printer's do not catch the former error. But the second error would be obvious. They tend to occur when the printing press is stopped for maintenance or started up again. This make it likely the errors are at the top or bottom of a stack that was inspected.

You, also, may question why these imperforate errors appear to be bought only by people who require larger blocks of the stamp. Then again, the postmaster may consider it an opportunity to get rid of the stamps, rather than having to fill out forms and send them back to Royal Mail.

A modern British error:



Normally, such an error should have been detected by the printers and destroyed. It occurred on all printer's sheets, or half the counter sheets. Without a story backing up its history, it would be silly to consider this anything but printer's waste.

Soon after the set of four high-value stamps had been issued on 1 July 2003, the error was discovered. What made it even more spectacular for a stamp engraved with the aid of computer software, was that it was adjoining the cylinder number of the no-dot half of the printer's sheet.

As I had a standing order for cylinder singles, I checked my stamp. It was above error with the missing £ sign. Then, someone noticed the error had been published in advance. The British Philatelic Bulletin in which the issue was announced showed a picture of the set with attached no-dot cylinder numbers on the selvedge. Normally, stamps are shown without the selvedge. The picture clearly showed the error.

Without a story backing up its history, it would be silly to consider this anything but printer's waste.

No, I'd strongly disagree in this case. Priinter's waste is the result of the printer doing something wrong. (With printer I loosely mean either the printing machine and/or the people operating the printer).
It seems the plate(s) contained the missing design elements right from the start. So in essence, I'd call it a siderographer's error. The people uing the plates are not responsible for a siderographer's mistakes. They used what they got and made no mistakes.

De La Rue, who were the printers, made an error copying the images to make up the plate. This was missed and a plate was engraved and used to print the sheets with the error. In the end the sheets were recalled to be destroyed.

This type of error should have been caught by the quality inspection (really before printing) and have led to the print run being destroyed, as happened with much of it. That would be printer's (De La Rue) waste if it had come to market.