2c Carmine Rose, Ty. II, Rotary Perf 11 x 10 (539). Top plate no. 7463 and "S 20" block of four, lightly hinged, brilliant color, typical centering for plate blocks of this issue, tiny hole near top of selvage at upper left

FINE. AN EXCEEDINGLY RARE PLATE BLOCK OF THE 1919 2-CENT TYPE II ROTARY PRESS WASTE ISSUE.

At the beginning or end of a coil-stamp print run from the 170-subject rotary plates, some leading or trailing paper was left over that was too short for rolling into 500-stamp rolls. In 1919 the Bureau devised an economical plan to salvage this waste by converting the leftovers from coil stamps into sheet stamps. This was accomplished by cutting the sheets into panes and running them through the flat-plate perforator for the horizontal perforations, giving the stamps perforations on all sides. The Type III design was far more plentiful (producing Scott 540) but a small number of Type II (Scott 539) was also produced.

Since Scott 539 was put through two different perforating machines (perforated 10 vertically on the rotary perforator during the coil part of production and then perforated 11 on the flat plate perforator), most of the stamps are off-center. The rotary press sheets also had a natural tendency to curl, making perforating on the flat plate perforator especially difficult.

Power Search contains only three unduplicated plate blocks of this issue. The last we offered was in 2002; prior to that one has to go to our 1989 Rarities sale to find the plate block offered here.

With 1989 P.F. certificate

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