Harvey

When the US printed most of their earlier stamps they produced larger sheets made up of four smaller sheets separated by lines or gutters. This is where line pairs and gutter pairs come into existence. If you had a line pair from the outer area there could be an arrow leading into the line. You can ever end up with line singles. I have quite a few of these, even some line blocks that I really like. Except for the Farley stamps these stamps are usually not noted in Scott's. What I'm wondering is whether they have any more value. They should since there would be many fewer of them. Does anyone else sort of look for them? They really seem to add to a collection. Something else I have a few of, and are quite often valued, are the pasted up pairs of coils for the older coils. Those are very interesting and do have a fair amount of value, but they usually don't show up. They exist in Canadian coils as well but I don't think line/gutter pairs do. I have one more question. Is there a special name for the master sheet of four sheets, it seems a bit dumb to call them large or small sheets!

Login to Like
this post

Harvey

re: Line pairs, gutter pairs, arrow pairs, etc.

I was searching line pairs on line and they talk about Joint Line pairs and guide line pairs and only in relation to coils. I'm really confused because that even though I have quite a few line pairs with coils I have them on non coils as well. Somewhere I saw pictures showing very large sheets of stamps divided into smaller sheets by lines or gutters. Stamps taken from two of these smaller sheets would have lines or gutters separating them. I am looking at my Scott's US specialized at the moment and they show a plate of 400 stamps divided into 4 panes of 100 each by lines to show where cutting is to be done later when these 400 stamp sheets are printed. If this cutting were not done and stamps were removed from the sheet we would end up with stamps separated by a line making line pairs. They are also showing 4 arrows in the margins showing where the cuts should be made. This would give four sets of lined arrow pairs. I'm just curious why the cutting would not be done so you would end up with line pairs and why they are not worth more than a regular pair of stamps. Is this clear or am I confusing everyone?
As far as coils are concerned if the coils were cut from the rows or columns of the sheets of 400 they would also show these lines and if two (or more) rows or columns were joined by small pieces of paper to make a roll of stamps we would end up with our "pasted up pair". Am I out to lunch on all of this? It makes sense to me, but then I could be wrong about this whole process!!
I think we're talking 1920's and 1930's here and the process was changed later, I think!!
EDIT Where do gutter pairs come from? I have both perforated and non perforated gutter pairs as well. I think a lot of this stuff came from the Farley stuff in the mid 1930's. Were some sheets of 400 divided by gutters as opposed to lines?
There is also a very famous set of early Brazil stamps that have different denominations in the various parts of the sheet and some very rare combinations exist. The first image just shows the stamps in the series but the second image shows a very rare line pair where the two stamps are of different denominations (called the "PACK STRIP" $$$$$!!). By the way these stamps are not mine (I wish!!), I stole the images on line and somewhere I saw an article about these very famous stamps!https://siegelauctions.com/2008/957/957p ...

Login to Like
this post

Airline

23 Feb 2023
11:06:38am

re: Line pairs, gutter pairs, arrow pairs, etc.

Believe you are talking about sheets being made up of panes. So a sheet of 400 in panes of a 100 each. This would give you both horizontal and vertical gutter pairs.

Sorry, didn't read your last comment entirely. You seem to have it correct, 4 panes of 100 each to each sheet of 400.
I had always thought the marginal lines and vees were alignment guides for separate colors.

Login to Like
this post