Break Time I

If you look at the topic, Philosophy of Philatelics on this blog, you will see that Rob has a hobby involving stamps and postal history.  During the Winter months, he likes to spend a little time on this hobby and will sometimes share some of his research with you here.  Enjoy it for what it is worth - or ignore it if it isn't your cup of tea.  In the end, it's all part of trying to balance my life and stay positive and interested in things around me.

Our first installment for the Winter is a page I created with a single envelope that was sent in 1867.  At this point in time, a letter to France from anywhere in the United States cost 15 cents per quarter ounce (15 grams).  If you do the math, you'll find the conversion between the grams and ounces is not exact.

A quarter ounce is not very much weight, so there are many cases where the letter required a double rate (30 cents).  The letter that was sent in this envelope apparently weighed more than a quarter ounce and no more than a half ounce.

The other interesting thing about this item (ok, there are actually many things) is the odd little scratch on Washington's forehead.  Stamps were printed using metal plates. Multiple images of the same stamp were impressed on these metal plates.  Ink was applied to the plate and then paper was placed on the sheets to take the impression.  The plates could be damaged over time.  One of the images of the stamp received a scratch on the metal plate.  Once that scratch occurred, every stamp that was printed in that position of the sheet from then on has this extra little line on it.  So, you might think that there are LOTS of these out there?

Well, you would be wrong about that.  This scratch would appear once out of about 200 stamps after the point in which this scratch was made.  Then, you have to consider that most of the stamps that were produced no longer exist - thrown into the trash.

To put it into perspective, there were approximately 10 million of this stamp design created.  If you assume the scratch appeared right away, then 50,000 of this vareity were printed.  Let's assume 2 percent of all of these stamps survive today.  That's only 1000 copies remaining and that is a very optimistic survival rate.  Then, you have to consider the likelihood that many remaining copies have cancellations (the ink used to deface the stamp when it is used) that will hide this little scratch.

At this point, I have only seen two of these 'on cover,'  which means it is on a piece of mail.  However, even if there were 1000 of these, I'd still think it was fun.