brightonpete
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Posts: 5,110 
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Post by brightonpete on Dec 17, 2021 15:28:46 GMT
I am trying to gather up what few Queen Victoria stamps I have from Great Britain. I "thought" plate numbers were printed in the side scroll work of the stamp. Here is the one I have, and I can't see anything. Perf 14, large crown watermark.
The entire stamp...  Here are the left and right sides... 
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vikingeck
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Posts: 3,295
What I collect: Samoa, Tobacco theme, Mail in Wartime, anything odd and unusual!
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Post by vikingeck on Dec 17, 2021 15:56:43 GMT
Peter the printed plate numbers only appear on the next series of penny reds and two pence blue , issue with letters in all 4 corners.
The early imperfs and the various printings of perf 16 and 14; the so called “Penny red Stars,” such as the one you illustrate require determined efforts to detect subtle differences in the letters such as are used for plating the penny Black …….very specialised
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brightonpete
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On a hike at Goodrich-Loomis
Posts: 5,110
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Post by brightonpete on Dec 17, 2021 18:28:11 GMT
Ooh, darn... thanks Alex. I thought they were the newer issues.
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stainlessb
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qaStaHvIS yIn 'ej chep
Posts: 4,665
What I collect: currently focused on most of western Europe, much of which is spent on France, Belgium, Germany and Great Britain Queen Victoria
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Post by stainlessb on Dec 17, 2021 20:30:43 GMT
Yes Pete, it is a bit of a challenge with these- there is a digital aide on the BPS site (e-gauge) but you need an 800 dpi scan with the image as close to 666 x 777 pixels as you can get (image- frame to frame). Yours is a good candidate as the stamp has enough of the frame all 4 sides.
The e-gauge is used to measure the position of the two letters, L, bottom L, bottom R and R, then this is manually entered and the program comes back with a list based on your 4 parameters, or 3, or 2 or even just one (and the list with fewer measurements gets larger)*- then you get to go through the images of imprimaturs and do the final leg work by comparing the imprimatur letters position to your stamp. The imprimatur images are not really large, and although digital, they pixelate rather quickly if you try and enlarge, so can get tough on old eyes!
I have gotten lucky on some stamps and found a match rather quickly, with others I have spent considerable time, sometimes rescanning and starting over... and a few times only being able to narrow it down to a couple of plates as possibles...
Best not to do if there's anything pressing coming up!
* I have the set of books by Roland Brown and GBPS which has all the individual measurements for the four parameters for all the plates starting with Die 1, plate 1
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