My Personnal Penny Red Challenge

Does it have gum? It looks extremely faded.
It is not as extremely bad as it looked in the original picture, but it does make me ask if the cancellation was removed.

It has no gum.

I'm not sure what the cancellation number is on the FF but the ID is London NW and is probably very common.

I am afraid that plate 90 stamp is nowhere near rose-red but bleached. Either a cancellation has been removed or someone was heavy-handed with the hydrogen peroxide (probably to clean a sulphurised stamp).

NSK, so, how to be sure?

Did you buy the Plate 90 as mint/unused? It clearly isn't.

I bought it as mint, no gum.

Your stamp is an extremely pale colour. Even allowing for distortion of scanning/photagraving and monitors, such a pale colour is a huge red flag.

If you look at the colour within the marginal scrolling on the left, you see traces of a much deeper colour. The stamp looks even paler around the effigy of the Queen. This might be because the cleaning concentrated on that area.

An issue with these stamps is that the watermark, regularly, shows through and appears like a cleaned cancellation. If you look at the Queen's cheeks and neck, and around her eye, there are backish smudges. This might be the watermark, but the blackish smudges do appear like blobs (removed cancel) and not like outlines (watermark). You might want to have a look from the back to determine whether these smudges align with the watermark, or not.

The lack of gum, although not irrefutable evidence of it having been used is another red flag.

Two plate 90s for comparison



The one on the right looks pretty washed out to me.

Thanks Bobby de la rue and NSK! I looked at the watermark and yes, it aligns with some of the black spots on the front.

Next time, I'll look at these characteristics to be sure it's not a washed stamp or something else we don't want.