15c Black, E. Grill (91). Horizontal strip of four with full imprint and plate no. 41 in bottom sheet selvage, unused (no gum), deep shade on thin paper with clear grill impressions, few perf separations in selvage at left, the gum has been removed but there is faint natural coloring to the paper where the gum once was

FINE-VERY FINE. THIS IS THE ONLY RECORDED 1868 15-CENT E GRILL MULTIPLE WITH IMPRINT AND PLATE NUMBER. AN IMPORTANT CLASSIC PLATE NUMBER MULTIPLE.

This 1868 15c E Grill strip of four is not listed in John C. Chapin's A Census of United States Classic Plate Blocks, nor does the Chapin census record any plate number multiple for this issue. Our own records of classic multiples confirm that this is the only 15c E Grill multiple with the plate number.

The bottom edge of the back of the selvage has a small "W.H.C." handstamp below each stamp, which was applied by Warren H. Colson, one of the preeminent dealers of the early 20th century. In his 33-page booklet Colson of Boston and The Duckwall Collection, published in 1929 to document the collection formed by Herbert R. Duckwall of Indianapolis, Colson specifically mentions this strip: "In beauty alone we might award the palm to an exquisite mint strip of four of the fifteen cents 11 x 13 with imprint and plate number." We have no additional information about the provenance of this strip before or after Colson's 1929 publication. There is a pencil "SG £36/c" notation on the back of the righthand selvage tab, which indicates this strip was traded in England at one point in the distant past. We checked the auction catalogues of the Worthington, Waterhouse, Hind and Crocker sale, as well as the list of Duveen's United States rarities, but the strip was not present in any of these collections.

Without any meaningful Scott Catalogue value to cite, we are simply providing the total value for four singles with no gum

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