Scott 65 With Lateral Margins, Perfs, Color From The Adjoining Stamps. How Would I Grade This?

This stamp appears to be really well-centered, but it has full lateral margins, perfs and color the the adjoining stamps. How would this stamp be graded? Any ideas? What do you think? Thanks!

It would not grade well at all since the extra row of perforations are into the design. If it really is a double perf the value would be in the oddity factor, not the grade. Even without the extra rows of perfs it is centered low and we don't know what the back is like. Also blunt / pulled perfs.

Here's what a nicely centered Scott 65 looks like for comparison.



While it is nice, it's not perfect. There are some short perfs, which were common at this period, and it is centered a little low. It does have the entire design clear of all perforations and a nice fancy cancel to boot. I like it.

So, basically, it's merely an example of the mis-perferation of the stamp and adjoining stamps by the manufacturers, right? Do they make this sort of miscalculation in the process of stamp creation often?

The print run of this stamp used 26 different plates. A total of 1, 772,658,876 stamps from Aug 16, 1861 to Mar 1868, according to John. N. Luff's Postage Stamps of the United States. That's a lot of stamps! Perforating that many sheets of stamps,(8,863,295, about 3800 sheets a day) by hand feeding the sheet through a treadle operated perforator each day..stuff happened. But not that often, or they'd be everywhere!
Its a nice looking EFO, not as handsome as that jumbo 3c banknote, but good looking!

Mizar, no worries with the grading. That is a very attractive stamp!

I would love to own it and enjoy looking at it for hours!

As stallzer indicated, the double perfs if genuine make normal grading irrelevant for this stamp. I agree with rlm--an interesting oddity that is attractive in its own right.

I've never thought about collecting oddities, but since I recently happen to be coming across them, it's something to consider. I suppose, at the very least, it certainly adds another interesting dimension to stamp collecting.

Oddities make for very interesting collecting. One could have quite a bit of fun hunting for oddities / errors.

Stallzer, I think you're right! I can see how collecting oddities and errors could be fun. The EFO's that I have I've received inadvertently and haven't been intentionally seeking them out. I believe that Scott has (or had) an Error Catalog out or at least on that comes out randomly.

EFO's catalogue

http://www.linns.com/news/us-stamps...-a-must.html

I just ordered a copy of Scott's Errors Catalog. It should make for some interesting and enlightening reading. Thanks, Randy.

I have a few of these. I really enjoy the variety of odd ball results of the hand made process and, like littleriverphil says "stuff happened". These are a bit rough in places, but still pretty cool. I imagine the guy at work one day - "Oh, that was a little bit off. Let me try that again."

The 5 cent denomination of the 1861+ "Control Overprint" always - as far as I know - has the extra row of vertical perforations.

I really enjoy finding these double perfs. Especially when I can get both sides still attached.

It certainly seems to add another dimension to collecting, albeit, an "odd" dimension. Alub, I can understand your and other's enthusiasm for collecting EFOs.