If it weren't for the color changing on the items I mentioned, I would be inclined to say it was possibly a color missing error, or as Randy said, a chemical washing to get rid of the red. But it seems that the brown has the red missing (faded) to change the color. If it truly is fading, I agree that it is dramatic.
Dialysis, damned if you do...dead if you don't 16 Feb 2020 04:10:57am
re: Missing red ink?
Having a single, used stamp with different colors demands that the assumption is that it is a color changeling. This is because;
- multiple examples of a stamp is typically required to prove a sheet of stamps exists
- used stamps have, by definition, been through a lot and there is no provenance. The stamp could have sat on a dashboard of a car, been mounted in a frame next to a window, or been soaked too long.
- also note that for stamps which are older than a few years the probability of there being a previously unknown error is highly unlikely. The older the stamp, the lower the probability that an error stamp has remained undiscovered.
Inks are like clothing dye, they are not color fast. If you purchased two shirt and left one untouched in your closet while wearing the other one and laundering it a few hundred times, what is the likelihood of the colors being the same?
And note that some ink colors are far more fugitive than others (like red). Here is a link about stamp color changelings http://stampsmarter.com/learning/ArticleChangelings.html
Note that stamp in the top left hand of the linked page above, it is an experiment done by John Becker. (Click on it to see larger image) He covered half a stamp and simply left it sitting in a southern facing window for a month or two.
Don
Well I agree with 51Studebaker (Wow what a car!!). The stamp on the right has pale colors all over. The color of the Jacket and the Sack are not what it had to be.
Look at the two stamps that i scanned..
And the only plate flaws i know are these :
And what musicman says is the most common reason. They soaked the stamp in too hot water.
I recheck the stamp closely this time, I used a magnifying glass that makes the pores on your finger tips look like craters and I believe that there was never red color on the spot, most of the time you can see traces that another color was there or if it was remove by someone using some kind of chemical product, my hat is off to whoever did it, it is a perfect job.
I did the same with my Swiss stamp, and I see absolutely no trace of yellow. From the link above, it looks like changlings are more changes in color, not completely missing color.
On the other hand, I have no explanation why the German and my Swiss stamp are missing a color. In my case, there were probably millions printed, so if, say one sheet has a missing color, the chances that somebody would notice are small. Also, my stamp is from 1998, so I would have expected ink technology to be pretty good.
Some of the organic pigments that came into use after WW II can be completely destroyed in ultraviolet light - prolonged exposure to sunlight is enough, even behind glass. I've seen it on a stamp which was used to frank a postcard that somebody had then taped to the office window, stamp facing outward, and also on some stamps at the bottom of a shop window in Berlin where the sunshade did not reach (cheap stuff that nobody wanted to buy anyway and stayed there for months and years). Reds and yellows are notorious for that. Thinking of it, these pigments look that way because they absorb the other colors, and these are the higher energetic parts of the visible light ...
Also, the German and Swiss stamps in question are AFAIK lithographed (offset printed), so there will be no mechanical traces on the paper (as would be left by typography or recess printing)
-jmh
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