Help With Watermark ID

As a general rule for non-German stamps, I find the watermark illustrations in Scott Classic to be more accurate than the ones in Michel. For these Chilean watermarks, both catalogs show "re-drawings", but the Scott illustrations are more accurate to me.

That being said, you have a Scott Watermark c (my non-expert opinion).

I don't recommend using retroReveal to decipher watermarks. There are 2 much better ways if you want to make a scan:

1. (preferred) put stamp face-up on your scanner platen, drop some watermark fluid, put something dark and flat over it (in this case my cellphone {left}, because my heart is not flat enough, or black cardstock {right}), and scan



I find a hard black plastic surface produces better results -- the darker the plastic the better. The cellphone I had handy, unfortunately has a textured surface.

2. (pretty, but doesn't work with all stamps) put stamp face-up on your scanner platen, shine small/weak LED light on the stamp (will need to play around with brightness/distance), and scan; I use the cheap free Harbor Freight LED flashlight and it works great, except for thin paper stamps such as your Chilean stamp; for an example of such a scan, see Scott Hong Kong #44; this type of scan produces "white" watermark images, rather than "black"

Sorry, in my haste, I left out 2 steps:

-- plug in and turn on scanner
-- connect scanner to computer

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