The Age Old Question about Color

I've been collecting for almost 60 years and I still cannot find a way to accurately ID stamp color. I'm hoping some of you might have a solution that actually works. So, I get this classic British Colony stamp that is supposed to be Cat #xxx, perf 12.5 and #1 wmk. I look it up in Scott and it says "1d lake". But hold on a minute, there's also a carmine/lake variety and it makes a big difference in value. Hey, no problem, I dust off my Stanley Gibbons Color gizmo and find lake and carmine/lake. Oops, neither matches the stamp. Damn, I find my Stanley Gibbons catalogue and it says lake and deep carmine. Surely, since Gibbons makes the color gizmo, its colors are accurately noted in the catalog. Well, no. Gibbons lists colors in the catalogue that do not exist in the gizmo. There are also colors in the gizmo that I have never seen on a stamp (and I've seen a lot). Then I think, "The stamp is over 150 years old, perhaps the color has darkened with age, or maybe the color was bleached by sitting out too long in the sunlight?" Nice, if any of those are true, what color do I actually have?

I check on the Internet. It seems that almost everyone who has a Stanley Gibbons Color gizmo thinks it is totally useless. So I call my friend who is an expertizer for the APS in the German area. I know many of the stamps he deals with are very old and there are typically 2-7 color variants, often with more than one color per stamp. Hah! I am sure he has a solution. His answer, "I have the best German color palette money can buy. I never use it. To determine the color, I compare it to colors of stamps that have been certified that I have in my collection."

Well, thanks for clearing that up. So his carmine/lake for country X may be different for carmine/lake for country Y, depending on the expert.

Des anyone have some way to be sure of color that an old fart collector can make work? (BTW the above mentioned stamp above does not actually exist; I made it up for illustration purposes.)

Comments

  • 28 Comments sorted by Votes Date Added
  • Has anyone tried a color-grab app on their phone? Mainly for painters/designers, but, maybe?
  • Not sure what other collectors do but If I think I have a stamp of value I submit it to be evaluated. It may cost a couple of bucks, but a stamp with a certificate is valid proof of authenticity.
  • Peter,
    For a classic collector, like me, there are thousands of $100+ items in my collection. The cost for most certs is a percentage of the catalog value. I just could not afford all those certs. Besides, why cannot Gibbons or Scott or Facit, or whatever have a website with actual stamps of certain colors to be compared with?
  • Computer monitor color reproduction is not consistent. You almost need a Pantone kit (my wife was a designer).
  • Troy. I think something like this might work, but not with painters/designers, but with Scott or Gibbons. Post images of certified stamps of each color variety to be used in comparison? Painters make up a lot of names, "lilac tulip" anyone. Also, Scott and Gibbons can't even agree on what carmine is. Have you ever heard of carmine outside philately?

    Then you run into problems related to the hardware on your computer in rendering colors and displaying them correctly. And then your eyes are different from mine, etc. The problem could get really awful.

    Consider this. Your computer can render millions of colors; each is given a number. You scan in a stamp and compare it to your color database. The computer returns a number, + or - and you look up the number to get its name. Now all you have to do is trust your scanner/camera/computer hardware to be fairly accurate.
  • If you scanned (or phone snapped) a stamp along with a standardized calibration card (available on Amazon, etc.), the image could be gamma-corrected, regardless of monitor fidelity. Then you'd have your number. Someone just needs to map those values to stamp colors. I sold a car to a Carmine, once. He paid cash.
  • Search "Spectrophotometer" on Amazon. The answer might be there. New toys!
  • PSE recomends the Pantone guide in uncoated version to people that do not have a reference collection. All experts have their own reference collection. The Gibbons guide is not useful at all nor is the Scott old color guide. A good guide book on the subject is The Philatelic Book of Secrets volume 3 and it gives references to the Pantone guide but just for US stamps. It is also recommended to have an OttLite which gives a true light spectrum of regular light unlike the traditional bulbs we all have been using.

    I also knew a Carmine once and it was a girl. LoL
  • George, A lot of these color varieties are from specific printings. The catalogues unless very specialized won't go through the process of explaining the differences of these printings. The best solution (without getting a certificate) for a collector is comparison, experience and if available a published study or exhibit.

    https://www.hipstamp.com/store/harry-patsalos-philatelics

  • According to the BBC, carmine is made from bugs:
    "The insects used to make carmine are called cochineal, and are native to Latin America where they live on cacti. Now farmed mainly in Peru, millions of the tiny insects are harvested every year to produce the colouring."
  • "I also knew a Carmine once and it was a girl. LoL"
    Bill, are you sure that was a Carmine, not a Carmen?
  • My good friend Carmine Lupertazzi says "hey, careful...."
    images
  • I have spent most of today, determining the RGB number of actual stamps. I discovered that you can do this from within Paint. You load an image into paint and then use the "color picker" tool to grab a color. When you check out its data, it gives you the RGB numbers (three of them like 150, 88,92) Those numbers correspond to a specific color. There's a billion different numbers, so it gets very detailed. I discovered some interesting things. The British and the French don't see eye to eye on what is blue, and the British, French and Spanish have a difference of opinion on violet. What I want to do is build up a big enough data base of RGB numbers so that I can scan a stamp and use paint tell me what the RGB numbers are and then use that to determine what the best color match is. I use actual stamps that I know are certain colors. I pick the color from three different places on the stamp and average them. After enough scans, the number should approach a consensus number and I can assign a color name to it. Then when I have an unknown stamp I can determine its color by referencing known stamps. Its easy for me to do this because my entire collection is scanned and stored in a Excel file. The images are already there. Now for the problems. Heavy cancels make color picking really difficult and dirty stamps just have to be skipped.
    I'm not sure how far I will chase this rabbit, but as of now, it looks promising. If it turns out to work well, I'll be glad to share this with you all in the hopes it may get further refined. I'll keep you posted.
  • RGB might be a color standard but CMYK is a much more precise measurement of color.
  • George, Sounds like a lot of work and your end result probably won't match what SG or Scott has decided 50 or 60years ago as to what that stamps color is. One of the great things about this hobby is there are many ways to enjoy it, Have fun.
  • Peter, perhaps, but RGB (which can be converted to Hex) is computer friendly and I want the computer to do most of the work rather than my tired old eyes.
  • Harry, it should match since I am using actual stamps that I know are correct to establish color. I won't have to wonder if a stamp is rose carmine or carmine rose. The computer will see it.
  • edited May 2021 1 LikesVote Down
    The girl was named Carmine and she was not Italian. It threw me for a loop also.
  • I hate to throw cold water on this, but years in the graphics business have taught me that there is no such thing as an accurate color monitor, nor anything even close to evenly printed color sheet to sheet or even down the page. Don't believe it? Scan a stamp and then use a color picker on it. Draw it slowly across what looks like the same color and watch the numbers change. 200,118,23 rgb is different that 201,118,23rgb. That is because no matter what printing method is used: engraving, gravure, litho or offset, color is put onto the paper by lines, dots, smears, triangles - whatever. Each of those items, sometimes as close together as 600 per inch need to carry EXACTLY the same amount of ink, that is EXACTLY the same in purity across and down and entire sheet of paper. It doesn't happen, even with the finest printing equipment. What happens is the color picker "sees" a slightly different color as it travels around the image. Add to that ink changes with age, sun and artificial light change the
    look of ink as well as fade it over time.
    The best way is to look at a stamp under as close to ideal lighting as possible and compare it with a known color image (preferably a stamp).
  • Wasn't Carmine a boxer???
  • No, you're thinking of my carmine boxers.
  • So...is stamp color subjective or objective? If someone is paying good money for a color, shouldn't it be quantifiable, like centering and margins (and the sw to evaluate them)?

    I not keen on a leave-it-to-the-experts mentality. And colors do change over time, but that's true for eyeballs as well as spectral analysis.

    If this hobby wants to survive in the 21st century, it's going to need to keep up with tech. I would suggest standards that say this color is these wavelengths in these proportions +/-. The tech to prove an expert right or wrong is getting cheaper than the stamp very quickly.

    Don't get me started on handheld X-ray fluoroscopy to see if it's really bug juice or synthetic.

    I'm just an old fart with failing eyes and the desire and (finally) the resources to peek at more expensive acquisitions, but how do you even start a reference collection without just having to take someone's best guess?

    Just askin'. Luv you all. Ideas?

  • No, Carmine Boxers was a mafia hit man
  • Wayne,
    I think this will work, at least for me. My scanner (Canon LiDE 220) scans a stamp and gives me the image. The color picker grabs samples from several parts of the stamp and returns the RGB number. The monitor has nothing to do with these steps. The scanner, however, is absolutely necessary. I get a color from the scan and color pick by assigning the color I know the stamp to be. I average as many stamps with the same color to determine its RGB number and look for a match. How much "slop" in the system I'm willing to accept will be personal and I suspect that my numbers may not be that good on someone else's computer. There are about 10,000,000 colors in the RGB system so there will be some guesswork only if a color falls half way between two known colors. The actual colors should have a pretty big separation. I'm working on that now.
  • It looks like the sw for the LiDE 220, My Image Garden, supports color correction, and there's a new update available. Scan your stamp with a cal card and set it where the RGB tiles read 0,0,255, 0,255,0, 255,0,0 (or whatever your color scheme says) when you sample them. Make sure you're saving the file with the 48-bit color preserved until you test if the 24-bit reduction shifts the colors or leaves other artifacts. Looks like a pretty good scanner. Good luck and please let us know.
  • I will be ready next week with some preliminary data. We all can chew on it to see if it makes sense.
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