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Glossary of Terms |
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Letter to the Editor (October 2002) | ||
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Oct 8, 2002 |
Dear Sir, Ken Lawrence is to be commended for his article in the August, 2002 U.S. Specialist discussing in detail how the "APS Certifies Unlisted 3¢ Coil of 1910 as Genuine." Too often the expertising process is cloaked in secrecy and only the few individuals included in the process know how the "final" decision was reached. Mr. Lawrence has done the exact opposite; he has revealed most every step of his five year journey to get his pair of 3¢ imperforate stamps certified as an imperforate coil. However, by opening up this process, it also allows others, like myself, who were not privy to the process and have not seen his pair to raise new questions about the conclusions that were reached.
The claim Mr. Lawrence makes for this pair is dramatic: "it now holds pride of place as the rarest regularly issued United States stamp of the 20th century." That type of boast invites scrutiny. Moreover, there is a well-accepted axiom in scientific circles that is applicable here: extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Well, is there anything wrong with the methodology used for expertising this pair or is there anything else that should have been considered? In my view, some of the methodology was wrong and a lot of necessary analysis was not done. First, several unanswered questions are treated as helping to prove that the coil is genuine, rather than raising concerns that the conclusions are speculative because the questions cannot be answered. Clear and convincing proof is needed to establish an extraordinary claim, not just the possibility that it might be correct. For example, the problem that the height of this 3¢ coil is greater than is normally found on a Government coil is "solved" by asserting that the outer rows of coils made in this period could be taller than normal coils. Even if true, this doesn't prove that it is a Government coil, only that it is possible that it is a Government coil. A taller than normal coil should be much more suspect than a regularly sized one. Likewise, in discussing when the new mechanized equipment for making coils came into use, Mr. Lawrence concludes that this 3¢ coil issued sometime during the summer of 1910 was made by a machine that was first used about the middle of 1910. Since some portions of these two timeframes do not overlap, maybe it was made by the new machines and maybe it wasn't. The possibility that it was made by the new machines doesn't prove that the Government made this coil. Then there is the unresolved problem of the color of the 3¢ stamp. Mr. Lawrence does not contest another expert's conclusion that the deep violet color of this pair is right for the first printing of 3¢ imperforate stamps. Later 3¢ imperforates sometimes came in other shades of violet. However, the first 3¢ imperforates were printed in early 1909. The earliest known use of this imperforate stamp is February 13, 1909. But Mr. Lawrence's stamp is supposed to have been made in summer 1910, about a year and a half later. So why does it have the color of the first imperforate printing? Could someone else have made it from the first 3¢ imperforate sheets that were issued to vending and affixing machine companies in 1909? This questions leads to another problem I have with Mr. Lawrence's analysis: it does not adequately consider the many other possible sources of imperforate coils. His analysis pretty well assumes that if his 3¢ pair is an imperforate coil then the Government probably made it. No other possible source of imperforate coils is discussed. However, in 1909 and 1910 most coils were not made by the Government but were produced by private vending and affixing machine manufacturers. Like the Government, four of the vending and affixing machine companies listed in the Scott Specialized Catalogue of United States Stamps made imperforate coils using stripping machines with knives and cutting wheels. (It is interesting to note that the listings in the Scott Specialized Catalogue for vending and affixing machine coils are right before the listings for flat plate imperforate coils. They are listed next to each other because most flat plate imperforate coils were made for and used by vending and affixing machine companies.) The International Vending Machine Co., Mailometer Co., the Schermack Co. (the predecessor of Mailometer), and the U.S. Automatic Vending Machine Co. all made machine stripped horizontal coils from 3¢ imperforate stamps (#345) of the Issue of 1908-09. These companies applied their own proprietary perforations to the imperforate coils they made. However, it is possible that by accident or design one coil pair of the many thousands they made was left imperforate. Furthermore, this "problem" is the same for the Government issued #345 imperforate coils as for privately made imperforate coils; the Government coils would have been made for a company that would have perforated them with a proprietary perforation or used them in a machine that affixed them, one by one, to letters. So no Government issued imperforate pair of the 3¢ imperforate coil would exist now if the purchasing company used it for the intended purpose. In addition to these commercial companies, one stamp dealer, C. H. Mekeel, is known to have made machine stripped imperforate coils and then applied his own variety of Mailometer Type I perforation (and others?) to them. Furthermore, there were collectors like Alvin W. Filstrup of the Covel Manufacturing Co. who made machine stripped coils from imperforate sheets for their own amusement. Mr. Lawrence's 3¢ imperforate coil could have been a product of any one of these sources of machine stripped imperforate coils. Did all the certifying experts compare this "rarest regularly issued United States stamp of the 20th century" with the coils made by all these other sources of imperforate coils? Apparently not, so they cannot be ruled out. Furthermore if they all were examined, I would be greatly interested in learning how to reliably tell a machine stripped coil made by these companies from a machine stripped Government imperforate coil. After more than twenty years of studying private vending and affixing machine coils and Government flat plate imperforate coils, I don't always know how to distinguish who made a pair of machine stripped coils. At times the cuts made by the knives and cutting wheels of Government and private stripping machines all look very much alike. But the techniques and methods Mr. Lawrence describes would need to consistently and reliably distinguish between them. In addition, these techniques would have to be so sophisticated that they could identify with great certainty the differences in the cuts made on a pair of stamps by a Government stripping machine knife and a Government stripping machine cutting wheel. Furthermore if these techniques can work for Government imperforate coils, they should also work to help expertise the stripping made on any coils, Government and private, imperforate and perforated. It will be interesting to see if other experts can use the same methods to consistently come to the same conclusions. In conclusion, I don't think that Mr. Lawrence's article has proven his case that this is a Government imperforate coil. Could it be? Yes, it could be. But it is also reasonably possible that someone else made the coil. Because of these major gaps in his analysis and proof, there is considerable doubt about his extraordinary claim. I hope that Mr. Lawrence's admirable openness and honesty about his research and the issues raised in this letter will spur us on to study these stamps more carefully and learn more than we now know about them. That is the challenge, and fun, about early flat plate imperforate coils and vending and affixing machine coils. Sincerely, The Author Responds Steven R. Belasco has misapplied Carl Sagan's aphorism.1 My assertion that this coil (or any other unique stamp) is the rarest one until more are found is not an extraordinary claim; it is a tautology (as in logic: "a statement that is true by necessity or by virtue of its logical form" (Oxford American Dictionary). However, as we shall see below, Mr. Belasco himself has made a number of extraordinary claims that are supported by no evidence whatever. Nevertheless, I am grateful to him for continuing the discussion of United States 3¢ imperforate coils, because the subject has been neglected for far too long. Responding in order to Mr. Belasco's points: Height As I wrote when I first described this coil in 1997: "It measures exactly one inch (25.4 mm) tall, which is on the high side for a government coil, but I have examples of normal perforated horizontal government coils that match its height."2 In his report that I submitted to the APS Expert Committee, Mick Hadley wrote, "Height was slightly taller than the norm but of no consequence since I have examples that vary also." Wallace Cleland wrote, "People who have looked at this item before have commented on the height, which is 2.54 cm. I have measured other DL watermarked coils I have and their heights vary from 2.44-2.50 cm. Thus I do not think that a distance of 2.54 cm disqualifies this pair from being a coil, particularly since it has a guideline at the top." Stickney Coiling Equipment Actually the summer 1910 timing is perfect, particularly if my private speculation is correct. At the time these stamps were manufactured, 3¢ stamps met very few needs. Thus the first two 3¢ coil issues (vertical and horizontal imperforates) are virtually unknown, while the third, the Orangeburg coil of 1911 (Scott #389) is rare. I'd guess that overstocked 3¢ sheets would have been regarded as ideal subjects for testing the two Benjamin Stickney inventions, the pasting table and the slitting/coiling machine, and might have yielded one of its first products. We know that auto-wound gauge 12 perforated coils proved too frail, but imperforates were well suited to the equipment's temperament until the switch to gauge 8¸ perforated coils occurred later in 1910. In his article on the Orangeburg coil,3 George Griffenhagen wrote, "[George] Brett now counsels that the Bureau of Engraving and Printing Annual Report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1911 records 297 3¢ coils were produced representing 2,235 sheets or 223,500 stamps. Perforations or watermarks are not recorded in these records, but since Scott 394s were not produced until some time after June 30, 1911, and there were no other 3¢ coils made, it appears that all 223,000 stamps were Orangeburg coils, leaving only speculation on the number that were coils of 500 and the number that were coils of 1,000." He was wrong, though. Twenty-seven of those rolls could have been, and probably were, imperforate horizontal coils previously listed as Scott #345S. Color In my description of the stamp as "deep violet" I was merely using the Scott catalogue's convention for identifying the color. Had I meant to specify the particular shade, I would simply have written "violet." Note that those are the two shades listed by Max Johl to describe 3¢ Washington imperforates with double-line watermark. He included a third shade, "light violet," for perforated stamps.4 As one point in support of his analysis, Mick Hadley wrote, "Color appears in the correct range." I did not quibble over Edward Siskin's comment on the color shade because it was neither controversial nor pertinent to the final conclusion of the experts; what mattered was his opinion that the pair is a coil. The shade does match early imperforate printings, but it also matches later 3¢ production. Thus Mr. Belasco's implication is untrue. Unlike 1¢ Franklin and 2¢ Washington stamps of the 1908 series, which display clear progressions of color that can be linked to specific time periods, shades of 3¢ printings do not. Also, it is well established that some 3¢ imperforate issues are not included in Cleland's press history report. This is complicated, but worthy of explication. No one can know for certain whether imperforate 3¢ horizontal or vertical coils were manufactured from any of the printings that were issued as imperforate sheet stamps. They might have been, but just as easily, they might have been made from printings that were otherwise issued as perforated sheet stamps. Eight plates in two sets were used to print 3¢ stamps on double-line watermarked paper- 4918, 4925, 4926, 4927, and 5121, 5126, 5131, and 5136. The latter were star plates. Only the first four plate numbers, which went to press seven times from December 17, 1908, to March 9, 1910, are recorded as imperforate. But we know that the second set also was used to print imperforates, even though only perforated sheets are recorded, because 3¢ coil stamps with double-line watermark and Schermack Type III perforations exist with star-plate 3 mm spacings between stamps. Some prints from the star plates also exist in the violet shade that matches the first imperforate printing, not only on double-line paper, but also with single-line watermarks. My certified imperforate pair has 2.45 mm spacing, so it probably was printed from the first set of plates. Private imperforate coils? This is Mr. Belasco's extraordinary claim. Before suggesting that my coil pair is a privately manufactured product, he ought to have demonstrated that at least one privately manufactured imperforate coil exists without proprietary perforations. If it does, it is a great rarity, and deserves better than a speculative glancing mention. I am familiar with existing scholarship on United States coil stamps, and have published more on the subject than any other living author. I have a small bookcase filled with books and auction catalogues on that subject alone, plus about three linear feet of files. I have not read any reference to such stamps in any of these works, which include studies by H.L. Wiley, Charles Mekeel, Warren L. Babcock, Philip H. Ward Jr., George P. Howard, George Sloane, Martin Armstrong, and many others. Here is a claim that cries out for extraordinary evidence, yet Mr. Belasco has adduced no evidence at all to support it. Coil Stripping Equipment Mr. Belasco asserts that several manufacturers of private vending and affixing machines owned strippers that might have produced imperforate coils. Some of these assertions are as barren of evidence as the previous claim. Again taking his points in order: The International Vending Machine Co. almost certainly did not possess a stripping machine,5 and despite a Scott catalogue listing and some Philatelic Foundation opinions, almost certainly did not issue 3¢ coils with its proprietary perforations. As I have demonstrated in two articles, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing shipped imperforate coils, not imperforate sheets, to International, which then applied the firm's perforations to those government coil stamps.6 Mr. Belasco's assertion with respect to this firm is doubly extraordinary because in the past he has concurred with George P. Howard's and George W. Brett's doubts that genuine International perforations exist on Washington-Franklin issues.7 My belief is that International used a standard printer's ticket and check manual stroke perforator on its government coils, and that someone else later used a similar device on Washington-Franklins, hoping to imitate government coils but which later were wrongly attributed to International. Mailometer and Schermack both did possess strippers, and 3¢ coil stamps with their proprietary perforations were indeed manufactured from imperforate sheets. Their manufacturing technique differed significantly from that employed by BEP, and imparted different traits to the top and bottom edges of the stamps, which occasionally are useful in determining the authenticity of stamps believed to have affixing machine perforations. In any case, coils produced by those firms were stripped after perforating, which accounts for the existence of (philatelic favor) blocks bearing their genuine proprietary perforations. Although most U.S. Automatic Vending Machine Co. coil stamps were made from imperforate government coils, the firm did possess a stripper "which cut a sheet of stamps into 20 strips in one operation,"8 thus differing from the BEP's system, which first halved the sheets along guide lines. Wallace Cleland, one of the experts who examined my coil pair, reported significant differences between it and his reference Scott #345 USAV horizontal coil pair. Mr. Belasco's assertion about Charles Mekeel is his personal conjecture. Because he regards Mekeel's nonstandard Mailometer Type I coils as privately made fakes, he deduced that Mekeel must have possessed equipment on which to fake them. Other equally informed experts hold the more plausible theory that Mekeel obtained these as a favor from the manufacturer long after the original perforating bars had been replaced and scrapped, and that the replica punches manufactured to fill Mekeel's order differed from the originals slightly in their pin spacings. The suggestion that Mekeel built or purchased a stripping machine to meet his philatelic needs boggles the mind, another extraordinary claim that demands extraordinary evidence. Mr. Belasco's reference to Alvin W. Filstrup is misleading. The F.P. Rosback Company perforated Filstrup's coils for him on a Rosback stroke perforator, but that firm did not have a stripper.9 As specialists have observed, Filstrup's Covel Manufacturing Company coil stamps cut from imperforate sheets are characteristically well centered with "boardwalk margins," which must have been manually prepared to achieve that result, not mechanically stripped. Filstrup used imperforate sheet stamps on mail also, but if he had done as Mr. Belasco suggests, we should have found at least a few block multiples with Rosback perforations, and to my knowledge none have ever been reported. I believe Filstrup's 1¢ Franklin coils of the 1902 Series with Covel/Rosback perforations were made from imperforate government coils. Future research I have already begun studying privately manufactured coil stamps using the same techniques that I described in my article, and I do urge others to join in this research effort. As much as anything else, it confirms what we already had learned from the BEP's archival records on coil stamps- that many of them were made by adding private proprietary perforations to government imperforate coils. A byproduct of this research will give us a more accurate picture of which private vending and affixing coils were philatelic favors, manufactured from imperforate sheets, when the same firms' commercially issued stamps began as government imperforate coils. References 1. In the NOVA interview where he popularized the skeptical approach to paranormal claims, Sagan actually said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." His quotation has become a motto for the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. 2. Ken Lawrence, "Imperforate Coil Challenges, 1908-14," The American Philatelist, September, 1997, pp. 820-830. 3. George Griffenhagen, "The Orangeburg Coil - Revisited," The United States Specialist, January and February, 1985, pp. 11-23 and 61-66. 4. Max G. Johl, The United States Postage Stamps of the Twentieth Century, Volume 1, 1901-1922, New York: H.L. Lindquist, 1937, p. 230ff. 5. George Howard's reference to "coils of stamps made from ordinary panes of 100 stamps stripped and joined at the side margins" described a crude manual process that failed to work, not the operation of a machine. George P. Howard, The Stamp Machines and Coiled Stamps, New York: H.L. Lindquist, 1943, p. 90. 6. See ref. 2; also, Ken Lawrence, "Are These Coil Stamps Genuine?" The American Philatelist, October, 1993, pp. 926-929. 7. Ref. 5, pp. 13, 17-19, and 92; George W. Brett, "Some of Our Early Coils - Attributions of the International Vending Machine Co., and Others?" The United States Specialist, April, 1978, pp. 157-158 [the full article ran April-July, 1978, pp. 157-159, 206-208, 265-266, and 301-303]; Steven R. Belasco, "Characteristics of Genuine Vending and Affixing Machine Perforations," The United States Specialist, February, 1982, pp. 57-58. Also, George Brett, personal letter to Ken Lawrence, October 10, 1993, with photocopy of page 19 from Annual Report of the Director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing for Fiscal Year 1908. 8. Ref. 5, p. 102. 9. Frederick J. Kozub, "A Follow-Up: Private-Private Perfs? The Covel Covers," The United States Specialist, August, 1988, pages 373-377. Sincerely, |
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