I have a two part question about a First Printing Departmental Special Printing. How do I know that it is a First printing of the five different printings, you ask? Only the First Printing was cut apart with scissors. I have an O57s, a 1 cent State Specimen with what appears to be a drop or splatter of ink on the left side of the value numeral. Close magnification reveals additional specks of ink on the the E of ONE. The print does not look like soupy ink, that is an ink mixture containing too much solvent, so how or why would there be dripping ink near a freshly printed sheet? There are two what appear to be owner's marks on the back side of the stamp, one is a small hand stamp and the other is what I think are painted ( with ink ) letters. Anyone have any idea of when it was common practice to mark the back of stamps with owner's marks?
Similar to paper money, small extraneous bits of ink are common. If you have seen the presses used then, excess ink was wiped off the printing plate before pressing down on the paper. In some cases, they did such a poor job, the background had a different color due to smeared ink. They didn't worry about small defects, it was mainly just a job. Most likely the marks on the back were done for showing the opinion of an expert as to the stamp being authentic. This was more common for foreign stamps that many collectors didn't know about before catalogs and the internet of course. It could be that one mark was for the stamp and one for the 'specimen'. Many French, German, and Swiss dealers were common. I have seen owner marks , using scott numbers or Yvert # for ID so they didn't have to redetermine grills, or watermarks if they mixed it with other stamps. ( I still do with a small pencil. )
You have a good point, the Special Printings were done while Continental did the rest of the days printing, so to the people doing the work, it was just more work."Oh hey Bob, in your spare time..." I also posted this question on another board and on eof the answers I got from a man who expertises stamps says that the owners stamp on the back is still done. What you said about experts may account for all of the marks on the back of this "intermediate paper" Continental.
I was told that a stamp worth anything has gor to be completely untouched. I would think that if there is a marking from a piece of history that we would be able to add value to it.
The stamp expertiser that I asked that same question to assured me that the owner marks will not affect value and in some cases provide provenance. The 24 cent Agriculture above for instance is an intermediate paper. ( the paper between the Hard white paper that National and Continental Bank Note Companies used and the soft porous paper used by the American BNC. The owners marks on the back show us that 7-8 other Official specialists thought that this stamp was worthy of their mark. What makes it worthy of all it's attention is that Continental began using this intermediate paper a few months before American BNC took over the contract. According the records of the U.S. Stamp agent,there were still plenty of 24c Agriculture stamps in his vault, remaining from the first printing in 1873 to fill all needs at the time of the stamps discontinuence, ( all Hard white paper ) so there was no need to print this stamp again. So how does this stamp exist?
Oh interesting! I think that would be worth looking into and researching further for the answers here. Incredible isn't it? All these interesting facts and some of them with hidden events and circumstances.
