1c 1851 Plate 1-Early Stamps

This bottom row stamp is a "B" relief from position 96L1E. It was from Neinken's collection and last sold by Siegel in sale 1247. I'm not sure how he plated the stamp, and I can't explain the dotted line in the bottom margin.

The 97-98R1E pair you posted - I have good scans of that from the 1990s when a friend owned that pair. I used it as a reference for when we were first sorting out the 11th row stuff. Yes - that pair is a great example of it. 99R I believe I also found 11th row on IIRC.

edit: I'll look at your 96L when I get some time. Nice stamp.

On your 96L1E, I took a quick look at it, and I agree that it doesn't obviously match the 96L1E on the 1c plating archive. That one is from a strip and I'm sure is correctly plated. It also shows the dot at UR that Neinken draws in his book -- albeit the dot in the book is a big blob, versus the one on the real stamp. Nevertheless the dot is there on the 1c plating archive one. I don't off-hand see that on yours.

The horizontal line beneath your stamp is likely just a left over layout line from when they were setting up / organizing the work they were going to do to enter the plate. These are usually very lightly impressed and often wear off completely, or mostly, as is the case here.

I would probably start from scratch on trying to plate your stamp; making no assumptions and constructing an elimination chart of positions I know it is "not", and then a candidate list. Go from there.

edit: since this stamp is on stampsmarter as 96L1E it would probably be good for us to know if that is correct or not.

This is position 17R1E.

I call this my off-center 7R1E, as if you squint closely, at top, and blow up the scan, you can see pieces of the bottom plumes and ornaments from 7R1E. Position 7R1E for casual readers, is the famous Type I, Scott #5.



This position is a Ty IIIA, Scott #8A with a large break in the top line.

Its actually a very nice IIIA, since the break is consistent, large, and was always that way on the plate. It is not one of the positions where, over time, a line wore and became slightly broken in later impressions. This is a notable break. It appears that the break is due to plate finishing done, to clean up the mess where 7R extended too far downward, and so things got cleaned up a bit at the top line of 17R, thus creating the break.

13R1E is a similar position, to 17R1E, and we discussed it in this thread:
http://goscf.com/t/68958

Two consistent differences between 13R and 17R are:
1) the dot at UL on 17R is consistent as drawn in Neinken
2) the LR plume on 13R is short on the outside line. Much shorter than 17R.

The cover this stamp is on, is here:
http://goscf.com/t/72775&whichpage=188#792059

txstamp - Thanks for your post on 17R1E. It is informative, as always. I've never understood why the market doesn't seem to distinguish between 1c Franklins with breaks due to wear from those whose breaks were on plate from the start.

I also to another look at the stamp I posted as a 96L1E example. I hadn't questioned the plate position because of Siegel listed it this way. It was in the Wagshal part 2 sale and described it as ex. Neinken. I don't know who actually ascribed the plate position in the Siegel sales, but after comparing the stamp to all other 10th row positions and I'm now convinced the correct plating is 100L1E. The mark to the right of the R ornament in Doporto's example is a good match with my stamp, and Siegel has a good match with sale 1120, lot 1090. The latter also shows the same horiz. line at the bottom and the same small dot of ink near the bottom of the sheet margin.

The image below is from Doporto's archive.

And this image is taken from Siegel sale 1017, lot 72

I agree with your stamp being 100L1E.

@jaxom - on stampsmarter, could we get the stamp currently at 96L1E moved to 100L1E?
- thanks a bunch.

I fully understand. I've been there. I have a 1c stamp with a PFC signed by Neinken (when he was running the PF apparently) that is both plated wrong, and notes the type, and thus, Scott# incorrectly, even.

I always want to know who plated something whenever possible. Then I can decide the level of trust I'll afford to a given designation. I typically want to (re)plate whatever I get, myself, anyway. There are only a couple platers whom I "almost" trust implicitly. One was Dick Celler, who is now, sadly, gone.

Plating done back in Ashbrook/Neinken's time - certainly they were good platers, but we have more resources now, with the internet, and people just make mistakes anyway. It happens.

It all comes down to basic generic problem solving: Don't "assume".

I changed the plate number at the top and relocated the stamp. I also did not question the plate position because of it's pedigree.

@jaxom - thanks. I see it at 100L1E - good.

I still see it also at 96L1E though.

oops, removed.

Pos 63-65L1E, all Ty II (#7), tied by red Richmond, VA, July 8, 1851 CDS.

This is a scarce, very early use of the 1c stamp, whose first day of issue was July 1, 1851.

ex-Vogel

This was used only 3 days after the famous Newbury 7-8-9R1E cover, also from Richmond. See Siegel sale 1242 lot 6. Scott Trepel and I compared notes on the two covers -- comparing scans of the contents, and, unfortunately, they are from totally different correspondences.

That's a great cover, txstamp. The strip with red cancels prompted me to look back at a 98-100R1E cover that I recently sold. It also has a first month CDS cancel. The right stamp (100R1E) is a Type II on this cover, but on later impressions, due to wear, this position is found as a Type IIIa.

The stamps are an exception to bottom row stamps on Plate 1E in that they are all Relief A. Relief A was used for positions 96-100R1E until it was decided to switch to the B relief.

widglo - thanks.

Your Cleveland cover is an old friend - ex-me.
That cover has been around numerous nice collections.

I bought it in a Bennett sale in about 2002, I think.

A terrific cover. I probably would have bought it back from you if I had known.

Positions 22 and 25L on an old folded Bain's Telegraph

Picked up this 1st column right pane piece. Don't like any of the plate 2 matches. The Slingshot Venus site doesn't have any of the 1E right pane 1st column pieces to compare.