Which is the genuine: puzzles for readers

U.S. Stamp Notes Adventures in Expertizing by John M. Hotchner

Of the two United States Liberty series 1959 2½¢ coil stamp (Scott 1056) items shown in Figure 1, which do you think is genuine and which is most likely to be a fake?

The pair of stamps that appears to be skinned would be my immediate nominee for being a fake, but that is incorrect. Rather, this pair illustrates that modern papers used to print stamps are often multilayered.

In this case, the design of the second stamp of the pair was printed on the top layer of the paper. Exactly why, I don’t know, but somehow, half of that layer was separated from the layers below it and folded over to the right, which is where it was when perforating occurred.

What is clear is that the peeled paper of the design layer was folded after printing and perhaps gumming, too. It certainly happened before the final product was perforated, processed into coil strips and packaged for shipment to post offices.

As you can see when looking at that same pair stamps as shown in Figure 2, when the folded layer is restored to its original position, there are perforations where they should not be.

So, this pair is a genuine variety that is certainly collectible. However, it is not an error that will get catalog status.

I am often asked why one or another variety is not given catalog status, and this is a great example. The Scott catalog lists only errors. Scott defines errors as being total and repeatable: total imperforates in one or both directions (or between issued stamps), colors completely omitted, inverted colors, intra-sheet gutters with full stamps on either side of the gutter, and a few more.

But the 2½¢ Liberty pair shown in Figures 1 and 2 is a random freak; it is not total or precisely repeatable. It might be a fascinating example of what can go wrong in the production process, but its value is minor, and if you looked for an exact duplicate, you could not find one.

The principle applies to misperforated stamps. While there may be many misperfs for a given stamp, they can wander from one edge of the stamp to the other, as can be seen with the three 1980 15¢ Education issue stamps (Scott 1833) in Figure 3, so they are not considered to be 100 percent repeatable though some may be close.

As for missing perfs and colors, if there is any vestige of a color …

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