Third Bureau Flat Plate Printing

The Third Bureau Flat Plate printings have sheet stamps, imperforates, coils, booklet stamps, and a color error. The Third Bureau started with double-line watermarked paper, then transitioned to single-line watermark, and ended with unwatermarked paper. Sheet stamps started with a perforation of 12, then changed to 10, and ended up at perf 11. Coil perforations started with perf 12, then changed to perf 8.5, and finished with perf 10. There is also an experimental issue with Bluish Paper and various compound perforation oddities.

My goal is to present every Third Bureau Flat Plate issue, including Type differences, in every format, but irrespective of paper type, watermark or perforation. Type differences that are found both in sheet stamps and imperforates that were printed from the same plates are only documented in sheet format. A single example of the imperforate will suffice in that case.

I tried to collect self-certifying stamps as much as possible. In many cases, my choice was based on how easy it is to verify a specific catalog number.

Sheet stamps:

I primarily depend on plate number to identify the sheet stamps.

  1. ONE cent: plate # 4989 unique to double-line watermark
  2. TWO cent: plate #4905 unique to double-line watermark, but perf measurement also required
  3. 1c to 7c Washington – plate number identifies perf and Type (498-507, ex. 500 and 505)
  4. 2c Washington – Type Ia – (500) see certificate of authenticity
  5. 5c Red Washington Error (505) – in block of 9 – perf check to differentiate from 467. Imperf (489) not included since it came from the same plate as 505 and 467.
  6. 8c to 15c Washington – ignoring the remote possibility of an ultra-rare paper type, a watermark check is all that’s needed. Actual watermark and diagram shown for each (ex. 13c which was only issued double-line watermark)
  7. 50c and $1 Washington – only one catalog number
  8. 8c to 12c Franklin – plate number uniquely identifies (508-512).
  9. 13c Franklin is a unique catalog number, but a plate single is shown since everything else on that page is a plate number single.
  10. 15c to $1 Franklin (514-518) – plate numbers could be used to verify most of these, but a perf check was needed on the $1 stamp, so I did perf checks on all of them to be consistent on that page.
  11. $2 red, $2 orange and $5 green Franklins are unique catalog numbers

Booklet panes:

  1. ONE and TWO cent stamps identified by watermark (see image)
  2. 1c, 2c, 3c Type I, and 3c Type II all uniquely identified by plate number

Imperforates:

  1. ONE, TWO, and 1c stamps – uniquely identified by plate number
  2. 2c and 3c identified by plate number, Type differences on sheet stamps not replicated on imperfs
  3. 4c and 5c – these are unique, so no plate number needed, but a margin tab proves the stamp is an imperforate and not a cut down sheet single.

Coils:

  1. 3rd Bureau Flat Plate coils that were perforated 8.5 are used in this collection as an easy way to visually identify the stamps. Coil stamps perforated 8.5 are easy to spot. You can reliably count 8 or 9 perforation holes on the short side (for endwise coils) or 10 holes on the long side (for sidewise coils). The 8.5 perforation also has the distinction of being unique to Flat Plate coils.
  2. Vertical coils (perforated horizontally) that weren’t perforated 8.5 are the 4c and 5c coils, Scott 350 and 351. They both have Certificates of Authenticity
  3. The only Horizontal coil (perforated vertically) that wasn’t perforated 8.5 is the 10c Washington (356). That stamp will have a Certificate of Authenticity.

Kansas City Roulettes:

Kansas City Roulettes will have a certificate of authenticity.