US Sc 279Bc Color Variety Rose Carmine Type IV.?
I located this stamp on a postal cover I purchased recently .The 2019 catalog only mentions the stamp,.but not the value of the complete cover.! It looks like the shade of others sold on Ebay..Please help to confirm color as well as accuracy.(279Bc).?
Comments
But no, I don't think this is the 279Bc, I think rather (again, based on what I see, not what is necessarily actual), the orange red 279Bd. If the watermark is vertical it would more likely be a Bc candidate then.
Mr. Payton..well another stamp available (in my collection) has a stronger Rose Shade to its luster is the one in this image attachment..Maybe we can get a better grip on the subject stamp.? All comments welcome.!!
The problem with digital photography though, is that it's not 100% exact to "what you see". Same with a scan. So it is near impossible to tell subtle shades from images unfortunately. When side-by-side I can get a better gauge of what it is, especially if you have a KNOWN shade to compare them against in the photo. But it's very difficult to tell. Even when I move the image form one monitor on my end to another (I have 4) each image is slightly different, despite the monitors being "calibrated". Digital representations just never are visually "real".
So I can have a look/try to guess, but I can't be certain from the images. I'd have to have them in hand to make definitive call on shade.
In the two images you provide above, do you see how the two color are different in the images? This is why color over "internet" doesn't work where subtle shades are the issue. I would say based on the 2nd image that this is not Rose Carmine. But I really can't say for certain.
As nice as it is, the color chips are still useless. They are not actually representative of the the actual inks used. They are at best a nice color arrangement, but they are not close enough to be the actual colors used.
The only useful color guide I've encountered is RH White's Encyclopedia of the Colors of United States Postage Stamps (in 5 volumes), however it stops at Scott #547 (end of the Franklin-Washington era), so it's of use in this case.
But the key here is, there is no substitute for reference copies. This can be done two ways: known reference of the scarce subject to compare to a scarce subject, or known reference of the common subject to compare to the scarce subject. After you've seen enough of them, it becomes a bit more second nature. The challenge I have here is dealing with the digital conversions of the camera that took the image, and the monitor that it is displayed on (so a double distortion). This can be somewhat offset if there is a reference of SOME copy next to it that allows me to compare lighter/darker shades based on the known fixed position of some reference.
These "color charts" have vanished from popularity because they are of no real reference. (Not being critical just trying to be informative.)
Reference copies are the easiest way to tell otherwise, and organizations like the PF have this stuff on hand, and certifiers like APEX, PSE, PSAG, Weiss, Crowe, all have these on hand.