David Thompson's 2 Cent Documentary Block of 6 with Double Transfer

There are not too many fly-speckers out there in philately anymore, especially for the battleship revenues, for which fly specks, e.g. double transfers, plate scratches, layout lines among others, are quite common.  But David Thompson keeps his magnifying glass handy and his scanner to more closely examine his battleships.  We don't report every new finding on this site, but occasionally there is an interesting item.  Today we present an R164 block of six with two fly-speckable stamps, one with a plate scratch and the other with a double transfer.  See the upper right and middle right stamps in the block below.

 Below:  Upper right stamp with double transfer.  David has marked the clear DT points with white arrows:

 Upper right stamp with double transfer showing across "TWO CENTS":

 Middle right stamp with plate scratch noticeable in the right margin.

The Shift Hunter Letters

David Thompson did us a favor by looking for the double transfer in today's previous post in the The Shift Hunter Letters, to no avail.  Dan Harding maintains a pdf version of this document on his website.  In my earlier reviews of battleship related shift and double transfer material I did not include this reference.  While most of the work in these "letters" involves first issue material, there is a fair amount of treatment of battleships at the back.  Thanks to Dan for keeping this pdf up at his site and for Dave for checking it out for us.

R164 Double Transfer

Here is an interesting pair of stamps with the same double transfer.  The arrows in the margins of the quadrille paper point to clear westward shifts on the rouletted stamp immediately below and the hyphen holed stamp that follows.  These stamps were likely printed months apart yet they show the same error.  A limited number of plates were used for both the roulette and hyphen hole stamps.  Can anyone tell me which plate this double transfer comes from?

Roulette

Hyphen hole

Re-entries, Double Transfers, Triple Transfers, and Shifts

Until the past few weeks I have never really spent time to understand the differences between re-entries, double or triple transfers, and shifts.  Despite spending a couple of decades as an active collector and the past 5 years focused on the 1898 series of revenues in which double transfers and possibly shifts are common, I couldn't classify a pile of stamps confirmed with these qualities into their types.   It is obvious on some stamps that at least one of these errors in transfer is present.  Below on the left side are images from a shown in a post a few weeks back.  The right side images are from a "normal" stamp, or a stamp without any evident transfer errors.  To the eye these differences are obvious.  But which entry error do I have here?  

Below the stamp images are the Scott explanations of these phenomenon just for reference.  Meanwhile, I'll describe what I see, with a little help from Dave Thompson who sent me this image. 

Left 2 with re-entry marks; Right 2 normal

On the left two above is evidence of a "westward" transfer, with ink marks inside the two to the left of the edge of the numeral.  Compare the normal two on the right.

Left "TED" with re-entry evident; Right "TED" normal

The left image comes from the same stamp as the left two above.  But it is not obvious to me whether there is evidence of more westward transfer errors here, or whether there is some southern movement as well.  The ink dots inside the letters T, E, and D look like more of a southern shift to me, which would indicate that this stamp is scarce triple transfer variety.

The batlleship series has many of these types of errors.  Pubications like the Bureau Specialist focused on these types of errors across numerous issues, and this type of philatelic study has been popular over the years.  I doubt many practice it now.  But while the Scott guidance on these errors might not be of much use these days to most revenue collectors, here it is:

2010 Scott Specialized Catalog page 22A:

Double Transfer: The condition of a transfer on a plate that shows evidence of a duplication of all or a portion of the design.  A double transfer is usually the result of the changing of the registration between the relief and the plate during the rolling of the original entry.  Occasionally it is necessary to remove the original transfer from a plate and enter the relief a second time.  When the finished re-transfer shows indications of the original transfer, because of incomplete erasure, the result is known as a double transfer.

2010 Scott Specialized Catalog page 22A:

Re-entry:  When executing a re-entry, the transfer role is reapplied to the plate at some time after the latter has been put to press.   Thus, worn out designs may be resharpened by carefully re-entering the transfer roll.  If the transfer roll is not carefully entered, the registration will not be true and a double transfer will result.

2010 Scott Specialized Catalog page 22A-23A:

Shifted Transfer:  In transferring, the metal diplaced on the plate by the entry of the ridges, constituting the design on the transfer roll, is forced ahead of the roll as well as pressed out at the sides.  The amount of displaced metal increases with the depth of the entry.  When the depth is increased evenly, the design will be uniformly entered.  Most of the displaced metal is pressed ahead of the roll.  If too much pressure is exterted on any pass (rocking), the impression of the previous partial entry may be floated (pushed) ahead of the roll and cause a duplication of the final design.  The duplication appears as an increased width of frame lines or doubling the lines.  The ridges of the displaced metal are flattened out by the hammering or rolling back of the plate along the sapce occupied by the subject margins. 

Re-Entries, Double Transfers, and Shifts: Illustrations for Comparison

A few days ago a stamp was featured here that showed extensive signs of either reentry or a shift.  Over the past couple of days I've worked on how to manipulate the images to compare against a "normal" stamp. 

Left stamp with "error", right stamp normal

Left stamp with "error", right stamp normal

I am studying the literature I have to understand whether from the evidence shown in the illustrations on the left there is a shift or evidence of reentry.  Helpful comments are welcome.

Example of Extensive Re-Entry Marks on a 2 Cent Battleship Documentary

At the end of the of the documentary battleship listings in the Scott Specialized Catalog (after R172) is a little note that says: "Numerous double transfers exist on this issue."  Battleship stamps have long been the stepchildren of US revenue stamps.  And here is more proof.  First issue double transfers in some cases get their own listing in the catalog.  For the battleships, Scott just says there are a bunch of 'em.  And there are.  Philatelic literature abounds with illustrations of these "errors", especially on the 2 cent documentary.  Today this blog will consider one example. 

Retired Master Sargent David Thompon of Nevada sent a great image of a plate screw head in the margin of a 1 cent proprietary a week ago which I posted on this site.  A couple of days ago he sent a few stamps for my inspection by snail mail including the 2 cent documentary below he suspects as having evidence of a triple transfer.  I am not much of an expert or even amateur in these kinds of re-entries, whether they are double or triple transfers or a shift of any kind.  As a collector I am mostly interested in what I call macro-issues, like cancels and the companies that made them.  Closely examining 100s if not thousands of R164s to ID shifts and extra transfers is not where I naturally gravitate.  However, though I am not driven by the process of discovery with these kinds of plate varieties, I am more than happy to examine a confirmed specimen like the one below.  And David is certainly right about this stamp showing reentry marks.  They cover the stamp on the left, right, bottom and beyond.  Whether this is an example of a triple transfer, I don't know.  But I do have some literature on this subject for R164s available to me, and now I have a reason to read it carefully. 

Below I will show the full stamp and some close ups of the stronger reentry markings.  I have scanned this stamp at 800 dpi allowing sharp and clear enlargements of sections of the stamp.

R164 2 cent documentary with re-entries

Upper left 2.  See the red lines and dashes within

the white field of the 2.

T, E, and D with reentry marks

Reentry signs everywhere here, but most striking in each E, particularly the last

E which looks mangled.

Overall blurry appearance.  There is a small dash on the left

corner outside the frame line

I could have created graphics with arrows showing the greatest areas of evidence of multiple transfers, but the images themselves are the best evidence.  You can click on each image to see a much larger version.

There is literature available on transfers and shifts on the battleships, especially the 2 cent documentaries.  The American Revenuer ran an extensive series on 2 cent documentary reentries by Warren L. Bosch starting with the May 1983 issue and continuing through January 1984 for over 20 pages of narrative with illustrations. 

In 1981, Bosch came upon a trove of roughly 5000 cashiers checks in sequential order from a bank in South Dakota that was moving from its original building.  These checks bore the 2 cent battleship.  He worked to reconstruct the panes/sheets using check sequences, centering, watermark fragments and perf matching.  And then he proceeded to examine the stamps for reentries.  If you are interested in battleship reentries this series is a must.  Write the APRL if you don't have access to old copies of the American Revenuer. 

Bosch's masterful work didn't include a full literature review for reentries though, and he comments on the lack of such material, only referring to the work of George Black in Weekly Philatelic Gossip from 1938 to 1940.  Bosch missed what can be easily found these days using Riley's Fiscal Philately Handbook, which is an index of articles in the literature for revenue items.  Using Riley's index I have a stack of articles from the Bureau Specialist from the 40s and 50s in which the Bureau Specialist's revenue chairman, C. Brinkley Turner devotes columns to battleships and to reentries and plate markings of all kinds.  July 1949, March 1950, and December 1950 editions focus on the 2 cent battleship. 

  

Page 160 from the July 1949 Bureau Specialist highlighting

reentry marks and other plate markings like layout lines. 

The original is also a bit blurry.  The Bureau Specialist is now the US Specialist.

Turner and Bosch both show multiple examples of reentries though neither show a stamp with as extensive reentry markings as Mr. Thompson's stamp above. 

There might be more literature out there on reentries but the Brinkley Turner and Warren Bosch material is a good place to start.