SC 3209, SC 3214 From Far And Wide #3 - Used Coil Printed With Perfs Reversed ?

The normal stamps according to Unitrade and my own mint stamps show the peak at the upper left perforations on the top margins and the valley perforation on the bottom margins of all the "Permanent" value coil stamps.

My strip of 5 from the 5,000 stamp coil roll


My strip of five from the 100 stamp coil roll.



My used stamp with the printed paper roll possibly reversed when processed through the perforating machine. The peak perforation is on the bottom margin.



Comments appreciated.

A few days ago I scanned my used Scott 3215 because I noticed so much variance
in the print quality. A couple look so bad that I think they are counterfeit.
I was going to post it for comments here but I forgot all about it. lol
I wasn't looking for any peaks or valleys but I did gauge them as Die Cut 8½.
As you can see some have the peak on the bottom.

Nice! Now I have to have another look at my own. Rinse, repeat!

Mike

My used has the same perfs are my mint and looks too good to be a fake.

The counterfeit US postage is really good. I've taken sheets to my local post office and shown them to several clerks they cannot tell they are fake.

edit for clarity

Below is a Corgi Times March - April 2024 article by M. Zatka where compares genuine with Asian counterfeit and he states:

The production of these has significantly improved in that
the stamps are now phosphor tagged (tagging is very similar to genuine stamps but
the bars are slightly narrower), the images are much finer in detail (if not better)
and the type used in the gutter text is identical to the genuine stamps



Two distinct differences between genuine and counterfeit are
in that the genuine coil stamps have nibs on the die cuts but the counterfeits do not.
Also the genuine coils are perforated 8.1 - 8.5 wheras the counterfeits are
perforated 10.75

Based on the Corgi Times article, my used stamp must be real as it has nibs and fake stamps do not.

Also the perforations in yours appear to be 8.5 which indicates it's genuine.
Fakes have perf 10.75
Mine are all 8.5 therefore genuine but some look so poorly printed that I'm surprised
that Lowe-Martin would print such a mess.

Like this one below.

Are those what you call the 'nibs' seen on the top of the perf tips on the leftmost, center, and right perforations?

Is that an intentional 'feature' to help hold strips of stamps attached together (like the USA Riverboats 3095b), or just a side effect of the cutting process?

Yes those are the nibs and they hold the stamps together.

Counterfeit stamps are less adhesive to backing paper since they do not have nibs.

There appears to be no nibs on the booklet version of the stamps.

Scott 3225

The first self-adhesive coil stamps printed by Lowe-Martin were the 80c and $1.40 Maple Leaf rolls from 2004.



The very first printing of these two stamps did not have nibs.

At post offices it was quickly seen that adjacent stamps separated from each other on the tightly rolled coils, and even had stamps falling off the roll.

The solution to the problem? Adding the nibs. Actually, it was the indenting of the die cutting strips of metal that result in the nibs (i.e. the paper is not punctured by the metal strips where an indent was placed).

The 80c Maple Leaf subsequently appeared with nibs (thus two distinct collectable varieties). The $1.40 stamp never did. All subsequent coil stamps produced over the years have appeared with nibs.

The placement of these indents (resulting in the nibs) until 2011 was purely random.

Three, four or even five nibs might appear along the top/bottom of a single stamp.



ONLY rolls of 50 or 100 stamps have the nib "feature". The large business-produced rolls of 5,000 do not have nibs (the stamps themselves do not touch each other).

Booklet panes, being shipped and sold flat do not require nibs.

For the record, it is the random placement of the nibs that allows these Lowe-Martin produced coil stamps to be plated ... over 7,000 different possible unique stamps over the years.

Robin

Thank you Robin Harris for your in depth study of the purpose of these nibs.

Always learning something new here. Thanks Robin.

> over 7,000 different possible unique stamps

Yikes! Must .. resist .. temptation .. to start a new specialty.