Short stamp or aggressive reperf
Need a bit of help here. I have some tall and short banknotes from the shoebox sorting days but I never recall seeing a short stamp this new. Perhaps a top straightedge reperfed? Definitely don't want to sell it solo without some comment and appropriate discount or just toss it in a $/ounce packet?
Thanks
Thanks
Comments
Your scan is too small to be able to get the detail I need.
It's a BAD hatchet job of a reperforation, and when we look at it, we can see why.
The curious part here is why they may have reperforated it at all. As you note, it makes for a very ugly stamp, with the design cut way into the perforation. It's a "cheap" stamp as well, so having a perfect centering or a stamp without a natural straight edge (which is one of the most common "reasons" for reperfing on a single side).
But let's look at it, and examine how we can tell this is reperforated.
First take a look at the face. This stamp is a good reference for reperfing, because it has 3 good reference points in the outer edge:
1) The edge of the stamp itself.
2) An "inner frame line" around the stamp image
3) a sold block around the inner stamp image
What these three reference points do for us, is easily see WHERE the perfs are falling on the stamp. Let's compare top to bottom. If you look at the bottom, while the perf's aren't perfectly aligned (and this is a reasonably expectation with perf wheels), none of the perfs are TOO out of line, and none of them actually touch the outer frame line, though one is closer than the others,
But now compare that to the top. You have perfs that don't touch the outer frame line, some that do, some that reach past the outer frame line, between the image, and some that touch the image. They are a nightmarish mess in terms of their alignment to each other, In addition, some perforations seem to point one direction while others point the opposite direction. Their widths, and the perf (paper) gaps between each other are uneven (some wider than others).
Then there is the very curious matter of the tops of the perforations themselves. Note how on the top, the perforations seem to have "dimples" in them. This is the remnant of the previous perforation line, that now touches into the perforation tip of the "new perf". This is a tale tell sign of reperforation of a previously perforated edge.
I only really have 2 possible rational explanations for why it would be done this way:
1) It WAS a natural straight edge, someone tried to reperforate it, and they did a terrible job, and so it was reperforated again either by the same person (take 2) or someone else.
2) This was an experiment by someone on a cheap stamp before they tried their hand at reperforation on something of value. A used 616 at $13 isn't the cheapest test material, but it's not horribly expensive either.
My guess/thought is, it's the latter. And may have been a test subject because it already had a perf tear, or pulled perf, which dropped it to valueless status to begin with.
But this is not a postally created freak or oddity, it is instead, the work of the hands of a stamp mechanic.