I have recently participated in
a number of Round Robins and have been surprised at the condition, or lack
thereof, of some of the stamps being sent around. I thought it might be useful
for people to read a few words on stamp condition.
For the purposes of this article
I will be talking about used stamps, although of course many of the points to be
made will apply to unused (ie mint) stamps.
Before I write further I will
say I am by no means an expert judge myself but I have tried to look carefully
at the stamps I send and do my best to ensure I send, unless otherwise noted,
stamps in a condition appropriate for us to collect. So how do we describe the
condition of a stamp.
To start with let us refer to
Scott and the definitions they use.
Scott refers to the stamp Grade
and the stamp Condition when determining the value of a stamp. Even if we are
trading with each other and not for value purposes but to build and enjoy our
collections I still think we should be aware of the many factors that comprise
Grade and Condition.
What follows is largely taken
from Scott and other philatelic writings which I believe provide us with the
guide we should be following. I have referenced sources at the end of the
article.
Grade, according to Scott, only
addresses centering and cancellations.
Condition refers to other
factors such as colour, perforations, thins, tears, creases, markings by
collectors, hinge presence, presence of selvge, and I’m sure there are others
you can think of.
I think it is easier to define
the condition of a stamp in terms of all the above.
So for used stamps and using
various references sources I will describe the following 5 used categories: You
may read of others such as Average, and Damaged but I think these 5 are
comprehensive enough for our needs.
Superb, Very Fine, Fine, Good
(sometimes referred to as Average), and Poor.
This may be too detailed for
some of you and we may be content in our general dealings with Very Fine, Fine
and Good. We might be more interested in Superb if we are buying for investment,
so I’ll say little on that in this text. As for Good and Poor these may be
thought of as space fillers where there is some fault with the stamp. (Damaged
stamps are also included in this spacefiller category). Often these stamps will
be useful where the value of a Very Fine copy of the stamp is just so high and
so difficult to obtain that we will be happy to have an average or even poor
copy in our collection. By example, in a recent round robin I included 3 copies
of GB SG 416, catalogued at £110 each. I am not that generous though, as the
stamps had thins on the reverse side so would really be worth a few dollars, but
all the same, useful, I hoped, to some collectors as spacefillers.
But back to the categories and I
hope the following is useful to you.
Superb means the stamp is
perfect in every dimension, including the centering of the image with the
perforations, or for imperforate stamps they will be perfectly centered with
even margins. The colour, cancellation, and perforations will all be superb.
Very
Fine. Definitions vary among the authorities I have read but generally a Very
Fine used stamp may be slightly off centre on two sides but will still present a
reasonably balanced appearance, the perforations will be full ( that is there
will be no short perforations) and the cancellation will not detract from the
stamp design and will be a light ( ie not heavy inked) clean circular, or
equivalent postmark. The colour will be unfaded and the stamp will have no tears, creases,
thins or other damaging marks.
Fine: Again
definitions may vary but the general principle is that a fine stamp may have a
design that is noticeably off-center on two sides and that perforations may
barely clear the design on one side. Very early issues will normally have the
perforations slightly cutting into the design. Fine used stamps may have heavier
cancellations but not as to seriously detract from the stamp design. Again, the
colour will be unfaded and the stamp will have no tears, creases,
thins or other damaging marks.
Imperforate
stamps may have small margins, and earlier issues may show the design touching
one edge of the stamp design.
The picture
below is my attempt to show some of the differences.
In the
above I have tried to show six stamps to describe the Very Fine, Fine and
Good/Poor conditions. The Very Fine have full perforations, the design is well
centered and the postmarks are light and do not detract from the design of the
stamps. In the Fine stamps you can see the design is not as well centered
although the postmarks are light and again do not detract. By comparison the
Good / Poor stamps have heavy postmarks that clearly detracts from the stamps
themselves; the GVI also has a few short perforations although it is better
centered than the 26p Machin.
Good stamps
are generally those without tears, creases, thins or really heavy postmarks. I
do not think it is possible to be 100% definitive in ones statement but common
sense should prevail in my view. Both of the Good/Poor labeled stamps above are
acceptable to collect in my view. The GVI because of its catalogue value and
apart from the heavy postmark it is still a clean stamp. The 26p Machin is a
clean stamp with full perforations and quite acceptable. Neither stamp is
damaged and so collectable in my view. Often these stamps might be referred to
as Average Used.
Poor stamps
– and again depending on the condition these might be called Damaged stamps –
are more commonly found with heavier postmarks that detract from the stamp
design, or with some faults. Depending on the extent of the fault one would
decide to collect it or not.
And what do poor or
damaged stamps look like - the ones we should not be including in our RRs:
updated 26th April 2008
