US: Part Albino Print

I have my own albino that has baffled me as well.  This US stamp has a Bureau precancel on it, so all stages of production would have been handled officially.  I can imagine that somewhere there's a chemical that could strip the ink from the paper, but how would this leave the precancel ink completely untouched?  If it was in fact underinked right from the start, it's a rather large error to overlook during production, as there must have been others on the sheet that were also missing ink.  Still, much bigger errors than this have managed to sneak through.



Ryan

I've read before that the US Bureau precancels often used lower-quality stamps for overprinting.  I guess the idea was that precancels weren't as important as "real" stamps, so if some sheets came out of the perforator poorly centred or the gum was ugly or whatever, then the sheet was more likely to be put in the pile of stamps that needed to be overprinted.  But still, missing 98% of the ink on some stamps would make it a candidate for the shredder, I would think.

Ryan

Thanks for providing the link to this old post, Ryan.  Strange as it may seem, I think I have a possible explanation for your stamp after all this time.

For me, the clue is that the portion of the printed stamp that remains is brown in color.  The 6-cent Garfield issue is supposed to be orange, not brown.  But we also know that orange-colored stamps are highly susceptible to sulphuretting, and when that happens, the orange color turns brown, sometimes just in selected areas, but sometimes over the whole stamp.

The "cure" for sulphuretting is to re-oxidize the stamp by soaking it in hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂), which is of course, the same chemical that can be used to bleach one's hair.  So, it can be very powerful stuff under the right conditions.  I also read in a publication about chemical treatment of stamps that if peroxide is used to remove the effects of sulphuretting, that it is important to remove the stamp from the peroxide solution as soon as the color looks recovered, because leaving it in too long can result in the ink being dissolved altogether.

My theory, and it is only a theory, is that your stamp was soaked in peroxide to cure sulphuretting but the peroxide did its job too well and removed much of the ink.  In that case, I don't find it surprising that the black ink of the precancel would be unaffected by the treatment, as peroxide is not known to do anything to black ink.

Just my two cents on the subject.  Thanks for reminding us about this post.  I had fun thinking about it!