EXTREMELY FINE GEM. A MAGNIFICENT MINT NEVER-HINGED EXAMPLE OF THE 5-CENT ROSE PERF 10 ERROR, GRADED GEM 100 BY P.S.E. -- THIS HIGHEST GRADE AWARDED AND THE ONLY EXAMPLE TO ACHIEVE IT.

During the course of production of the normal 2c plate -- Plate 7942 -- three subjects were noted to be weakly transferred: Positions 74 and 84 in the upper left quadrant, and Position 18 in the lower right. The plate was sent back to the siderographer, who burnished out the three entries and re-entered them. Instead of the 2c transfer roll, he mistakenly used the 5c transfer roll for the 2c plate. The sheets were printed in the normal 2 Red color, but three stamps in each sheet of 400 were 5c stamps, which were normally printed in blue--that is how the 5c Red errors came to be.

The misentered plate and the sheets produced from it passed unnoticed, and the 5c error stamps were issued to the public. The largest number of sheets to reach collectors were perforated 11 (Scott 505). A smaller number were perforated 10 (Scott 467). The rarest of the errors are the imperforate stamps (Scott 485). On May 2, 1917, the Third Assistant Postmaster General sent out a printed notice informing postmasters of the error and recalling the "mis-printed" sheets, but by then the red cats were out of the bag.

With 2013 P.S.A.G. and 2015 P.S.E. certificates (Gem 100; SMQ $27,500.00). The highest grade awarded and shared by no others.

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