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I have received this query from Bob Mustacich, an American collector who is not a member of our Society. Can anybody help with information? (Maurice Tyler)
"I am studying the fingerprinting of comb perforations. This is an extension of research I have done on the fingerprinting of rotary and non-rotary produced perforations in 19th century revenue stamps. This research has been written up and is in press. The first article on this new process will be published in the first quarterly issue of 2014 of The American Revenuer. The article title is “Freak or Fake? A New Fingerprinting Method for Distinguishing between Original and Fraudulent Extra Perforations of 19th Century Revenue Stamps.”
"The same techniques can be applied to comb perforations, and I decided to reach far afield and study a sheet of comb-perforated stamps of Madagascar. This appealed to me because I do some collecting of Madagascar stamps. I obtained a full sheet of the 1921 1c overprint on the 15c stamp (please excuse my use of Scott numbers, but this would be a Scott #130). There is a number printed on the sheet: 0 29012 32. Taking a random sampling of 4 of this same stamp from collections, I find that these all correlate with positions on the comb used for perforating the sheet.
"I would appreciate any references or help regarding understanding who printed the stamps and what is known about the specific perforators that were used. A small sampling of other Madagascan stamps listed for 1921 had perforations that did not tie to this comb. I’m wondering if a single comb perforator was associated with each issue that was produced. Would this be a shared feature with the production of other French Colony stamps? Has anyone studied this and are there published studies on the perforations of this colony stamps of this time period?"
Last edit: 10 years 3 months ago by mstyler. Reason: error
