1c 1851 Plate 1-Late Stamps

Got an email from Deep Cert, who decided to take a shot at plating the A relief.

He thinks that it is 54L2.

His note below includes some good overall information:

"One curious thing not mentioned so far in the discussion is what we are calling the 'broken orn N'. The top half of the outer curve is missing. We have recorded six positions on Plate 2 with this feature: 16-32-35-52-54-77L2.

These are very hard to plate, partly because there don't seem to be many multiples around containing these positions. I have this 34-44-54L2 strip, scan attached. Orn L looks a bit different, but I think that's an illusion because the SCF stamp has the outer line cut off. All other ornaments, many with weak spots, are dead-on matches. The other five possible positions all have at least one ornament which does not match to the SCF stamp.

Both the SCF stamp and my strip have the faint vertical line in O of POSTAGE that you often see on Plate 2 A reliefs.

There are a few 'weak orn N' positions on Plate 3 as well, such as 17L3, 19L3, 37L3, 14R3, 15R3, and 51R3."

Send a thank you to Deep Cert.

I would have never found that one. Stamp Pos 54L2 is not shown on Doporto site.

I superimposed your image of 54L2 over my stamp to compare the ornaments. It looks like a match to me.



How many of these "other" tips such as which stamps have broken orn "N"? Can't this info be gather for a database where we can just fill in data about certain ornaments and get a list of probable plate positions? I was thinking about trying to create a database program for the 3c 1851 issue since most of the plating info can be asked in a form a question and eliminate choices with each answer.

I agree that such a thing/database could be useful.

There is an elimination chart for the 3c (probably more than one) that I know Bill McDaniel had worked on way back. Versions of it were published in various publications. It was decision-based, which is the type of thing potentially easily fed into a database.

The 3c works well with that, with all of its recuts, and well known identifying issues. The 1c is definitely doable, probably will have a bit less success, but it could be helpful.

The 1c has guide-dot charts, horizontal spacing and vertical alignment charts, and so on.

Different people plate these stamps in different ways. Deep Cert, for example, unless I'm remembering incorrectly, he has always just scanned left to right through entire platings -- starting of course with whatever plate he thinks it is. I don't think he typically takes shortcuts like this. Other people do.

I certainly encourage you to take this in whatever direction you wish. All new points of view and ways of attacking the problem of plating are welcome.

I'll add to my last post by simply saying that there is clearly some accumulated plating minutia knowledge that has not been written up. It has been a long time since the Neinken book came out. There have been periodic updates in The Chronicle, but I think that Deep Cert and a number of people that he regularly works with have in fact, made a fair amount of progress in refining existing platings and expanding the plate 3 platings, along with others. Most of their work no doubt has yet to be recorded anywhere. The 1c plating archive is your best bet at the moment.

One reason that I started these one-cent by-plate threads (except for this one :-) was to have a place to record such new information, free-format. At least it gets written down somewhere this way, rather than just lost.

This forum is a potentially valuable tool for this kind of thing.

It would be nice if someone would ghost-write a new version of Neinken by picking Deep Cert's brain (and stamp collection).

Well, Doporto site is missing a lot of positions that can be acquired through resources such as auction sites. I would rather see a stamp with no references than with no picture at all. They could also include multiple copies to compare. Every stamp that they plate should be pictured there. I think I saw on his site that nothing had been updated since 2004!

As far as a database, the 3c has the info available but the 1c has most of the info in private hands/minds only.

For what Doporto has done to date with his site, he deserves major accolades, in my opinion. This is a lot of work, and we have to be grateful for whatever someone is willing to offer up.

The way he at least used to do it, involved high detail macro photography of each subject. So he had to have every stamp in his possession - or on loan to him for photography. I don't know if he uses scans now or not, since scanners have gotten better over time.

I use the Siegel website a lot, since they make pretty good resolution scans of their lots. I know Deep Cert keeps copies of scans by position, of stamps that he has seen. I wonder if getting his records as such, organized and uploaded somewhere would be viable or not. There may be an issue with copyrights on some of the scans, however. I don't know if he'd know the origin of each one.

He reads this, so I'll just ask him here - if he thinks uploading his scans to, say, stamp smarter, or the 1c plating archive in some organized fashion is a worthwhile effort, or not?

I have found that Doporto is receptive to including 1200 dpi scan of an excellent stamp especially if accompanied by a copy marked with arrows showing the plating marks consistent with his format. I have submitted several stamps which he has used on his site.

njs - Thanks, that's good to know.

Maybe that's the way to approach this.

Doporto does maintain his site, and in fact, when I went there just now, I see an update from November of 2017.

Please be respectful of how much work is involved in such an endeavor, and the labor involved, vs real life non-stamp time, which is always more important than some stamp website. After years of doing this, I've learned to be quite grateful for whatever contributions others wish to make.

njs's input that Doporto may be willing to take high quality scans, marked up to his standards, basically ready to be posted, is very useful, and seems to me to be the way to go. You are correct, that multiple copies of the same plate position are always useful, and in fact, Doporto has multiple copies of many positions on his site.

I love the Doporto site. I am not trying to say anything negative about it. I appreciate the work involved that he has put into it. I would like to help as well but I do not have Neiken's book. I had sent an email to him about assisting in any way that I can and never received a response (but that did not surprise me).

I usually scan my stamps with 2400dpi. My thoughts are to create a program where you just fill in questions that you know about the stamp and get back possible plate positions. I will try the 3c issue first as more info is available. I am thinking on how to go about it and will give something a try. For the 1c issue, Neiken's book would be pretty useless as the detail he looked for is not programmable. But stuff like knowing which stamps have a partial orn-N, is the type of info that I could use. I also took notice of a limited number of stamps that have a cut off orn-B. If I could get enough of this type of info, I could create a program. Is there a way of telling which plate just by looking at the stamp? I have started getting closer scans of the reverses to see about the paper differences talked about earlier. I would like to see a website that would allow anyone to upload a picture to the correct plate spot. That way we could get multiple copies and would not have to worry about picture copyrights. If anyone knows of any websites other than uspcs website that has plating info on the 3c issue, please post it. I could also use any info on the 1c like the short orns and the relief A dingle, visible doubling like 5R1L, and such. It will take a lot more thought and as much info as I can gather. There may not be enough info available on the 1c to create a plate search program.

Large projects are best tackled with group efforts. Group efforts (like plating) are best done with online SQL databases. These support multi-users and represent the very best technology for long term storage of the data.

Of course, the 3 Cent Stamp Smarter 'open source' 3 Cent database is already in place so I could add a 1 Cent in less than a day or so.

I asked the community and volunteered to put a 'open source' 1 Cent database in place on Stamp Smarter a while ago and the feedback was that the having multiple online resources would be detrimental.

The design of the Doporto website is a problem moving forward. It is not database, so Richard has to manually update every page. It does not support multiple user input into a database. It is not a responsive design. Obviously it has great existing content which deserves to be preserved but in it's current form this is going to be very problematic.

I do not know Richard but if anyone would like to pass along...I am willing to assist him with designing and implementing a SQL database and redesign of his website (no charge).
Don

Neinken's 1c book in its entirety is linked from here:

https://www.uspcs.org/resource-cent...nic-library/

Thank you for the info on the pdf book I will download it as soon as I get home.

Don, that is a generous offer. That will take a lot of time and effort.

I think a major failing of the 3c plating initiative is that each image is not credited to the collector that supplied it. For some crazy reason, after spending thousands of dollars and thousands of hours on their collections, people care about such things.

I have only ever supplied one image to the site. It seemed to have gotten replaced at some later date by two inferior images. Now that position is totally blank. Odd.

Hi all. A friend of mine pointed me to this discussion. I'm the APS expert on US 19th century stamp and stationery paper, and hope to add to this discussion where I can.

I've long been interested in 1c plate 1L. Generally speaking, the paper is a flaxen color since it is made from a combination of linen and cotton rag. Although, as with all composite rag papers, the color can vary from mostly yellowish to mostly whitish. It also is made by hand and pressed smooth. Since the pressing is not entirely efficient, this accounts for the felt marks occasionally seen on the reverse.

There were some alterations to the paper finish in 1851 and again in 1855, but these would be out of the scope of the 1c P1L discussion.

Winston, I must say that the reverse of the stamp can be used for identifying certain types of paper, but not on the basis of an individual stamp. The reverse is only useful when examining strips and blocks where there's enough of the paper to confirm certain aspects. These observations apply primarily to the 1857 issue and banknote papers of 1878. There was no change in paper of the 1851 issue, but as it was made by hand there is a great degree of variability that makes it appear at times to be different.