US 1909 2c Lincoln 'Bluish Paper'

Putting Lincoln back on the stamps

Abraham Lincoln first appeared on a U.S. stamp in 1866, a year after his assassination, in a black issue regarded as America's first mourning stamp. From then until 1907 there was always at least one regular stamp bearing his portrait. Then, in 1908, the Post Office introduced the Washington-Franklin series, which showed only George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. Lincoln was gone, and there was a public outcry.

The fix was a commemorative timed for the centennial of Lincoln's birth. The Post Office issued it on February 12, 1909, in the 2-cent value that paid the basic letter rate, so his face would be seen as widely as possible. It came in three forms: perforated 12 on ordinary paper (Scott 367), imperforate (368), and perforated on an experimental bluish-gray paper (369).

The issue set several precedents. It was the first U.S. commemorative issued in a single denomination, the first in the size of a regular stamp, and the first issued both perforated and imperforate; earlier commemoratives had been tied to big expositions and sold in multiple values.

Lincoln's portrait was taken from the head of Augustus Saint-Gaudens's bronze Abraham Lincoln: The Head of State, a seated figure completed by his workshop in 1908. At the time the statue was not yet in Chicago; it was unveiled in Grant Park only in 1926. The stamp does not carry Lincoln's name. A leafy wreath and the years frame the portrait instead.

The paper experiment

In 1908 the Bureau of Engraving and Printing was fighting waste. Stamps were printed on dampened paper, and wood-pulp paper shrank unevenly as it dried, so perforations landed off center and stamps curled and broke apart in post office drawers. The Bureau's paper supplier, Jessup & Moore, had been experimenting with mixed-pulp stock, and on November 20, 1908, Bureau chief J. E. Ralph asked the Treasury Secretary for permission to supply the firm with a watermarking roll so it could make a trial of part-rag paper.

On November 24, Ralph reported that Jessup & Moore had been directed to send 10,000 sheets of 34-pound paper, 18 1/2 by 20 3/4 inches, for experimental use. That was enough for about four million stamps. The catalog standard describes the paper as 35 percent rag; tests by the researcher Roy White found only about 10 percent. Either way, the rag stock and a mineral tint gave it a pale bluish-gray cast.

The 1-cent and 2-cent Washington-Franklin stamps probably went onto the new paper at the end of November or the start of December 1908. Around February 1, 1909, the decision was made to add the 2-cent Lincoln to the experiment, and the Lincoln plates went to press on February 5. On February 16, Third Assistant Postmaster General A. L. Lawshe ordered the stamps sent to the Washington, D.C., post office, whose postmaster was to report whether they curled less and separated more cleanly than stamps on ordinary paper.

The experiment failed. The new paper did little to cure shrinkage, and it was soon abandoned.

How many were there?

Published figures disagree sharply. A 2002 study of U.S. stamp papers cites the Post Office Department's annual report for the year ending June 30, 1909, as recording 637,000 bluish-paper Lincolns, alongside 1,480,000 of the 1-cent and 1,494,000 of the 2-cent Washington-Franklin bluish papers; a leading dealer also gives 637,000. Another long-standing reference says that according to the official report only 4,000 Lincolns were issued on the bluish paper.

What is not in dispute is that the stamps were sold through one office. The Washington post office sold out by May 1, 1909, and the remaining panes were spoiled or destroyed. The Bureau did not treat them as anything special; they were simply delivered as ordinary 2-cent stamps.

A registered cover mailed from Washington to Providence, Rhode Island, on April 30, 1909, shows how they were used: a pair of the bluish Lincolns with a pair of bluish-paper 1-cent stamps and a bluish-paper 2-cent, on a 2-cent stamped envelope, exactly paying the 2-cent letter rate plus the 8-cent registration fee. A Lincoln bluish used years later, in 1914 from Vera Cruz, Mexico, is the only one recorded from there.

The bluish paper scandal

The paper left a darker legacy. When the experimental printing was made, Arthur Travers, a senior official of the Post Office Department, asked that sheets of all the values be printed on the bluish paper for the department's files and the museum collection before the plates wore. Four panes of each value were ordered: one for the museum, one for the archives and two to be destroyed. The actual archival printings ran to 10 to 13 sheets each.

In January 1910 some of these archival panes got out. Eustace B. Power, head of a major stamp firm, bought two panes of 100 at the City Hall post office in New York. The collector Joseph Steinmetz then bribed Travers to have bluish-paper stamps made available at a certain time at the Washington post office, bought them and offered them for sale. The dealer Philip Ward, angry that Steinmetz had sold bluish papers to his client Henry C. Gibson, alerted postal inspectors.

Travers was dismissed on March 6, 1911, and indicted on April 3. After a year and a half of legal maneuvering he pleaded no contest; Steinmetz's name was dropped from a second indictment. The cost to stamp history was lasting: Travers had been the confidential assistant on a project to preserve the Post Office's stamp-production records from 1847 into the 1890s, and those papers were largely suppressed after the scandal.

How to tell the real thing

The color is subtle, and many new collectors are disappointed when they first see one. It is better described as a pale, slightly dingy bluish gray than blue, and heavy inking can hide it from the front. The standard test is comparison: lay the stamp face down next to an ordinary 367 or 368, which look brighter and more cream colored, and the gray shows. Collectors often put the stamps face down on orange paper, whose complementary color makes the bluish cast stand out.

Held to the light, genuine bluish paper has a fine, cloudy texture rather than the distinct mesh of ordinary pulp paper. In 1935 the columnist George B. Sloane noted that close examination almost always reveals tiny black specks, or cinders, embedded in the paper, a good sign of genuineness. Fakes made by soaking ordinary stamps in pale blue dye tend to show a concentration of color at the perforation tips.

Sloane also observed in 1934 that bluish-paper stamps with guide-line straight edges were becoming rare, and asked whether they had all been reperforated. Because of fakes and altered copies, experienced collectors advise buying this stamp with an expert certificate.

The stamps were printed from plates 4976 through 4979, in sheets of 400 divided into four panes of 100, perforated 12 on paper with the double-line "USPS" watermark. Plate blocks are far scarcer than singles: never-hinged plate blocks of six sold for $800 to $4,250 in 2015, depending on condition.

The numbers

Issue date

February 1909 (the Lincoln centennial issue was released February 12, 1909)

Quantity

637,000 per the 1909 annual report as cited by a 2002 study; 4,000 per another reference

Paper

Experimental bluish-gray part-rag paper; 35% rag per the catalog, about 10% per later tests

Watermark

Double-line USPS

Perforation

12

Format

Sheets of 400 in four panes of 100; plates 4976-4979

Printing

Flat plate

Sold at

Washington, D.C., post office only; sold out by May 1, 1909

Timeline

1. 1866

   Lincoln appears on a U.S. stamp for the first time, a year after his assassination.

2. 1908

   The Washington-Franklin series drops Lincoln from regular stamps, prompting protests.

3. Nov 20, 1908

   Bureau chief J. E. Ralph asks permission to have Jessup & Moore make an experimental part-rag watermarked paper.

4. Nov 24, 1908

   Ralph reports that 10,000 sheets of the experimental paper have been ordered, enough for about four million stamps.

5. Feb 5, 1909

   The 2-cent Lincoln plates go to press on the bluish paper.

6. Feb 12, 1909

   The Lincoln centennial 2-cent stamps are issued on the 100th anniversary of his birth.

7. Feb 16, 1909

   The Post Office orders the bluish-paper stamps sent to the Washington, D.C., post office for a field test.

8. Apr 30, 1909

   A registered cover leaves Washington for Providence franked with a pair of bluish Lincolns and other bluish-paper stamps.

9. May 1, 1909

   The Washington post office has sold out of the bluish-paper stamps.

10. Jan 1910

    Archival bluish-paper panes leak out; two panes are bought at New York's City Hall post office.

11. Mar 6, 1911

    Postal official Arthur Travers is dismissed over the bluish paper affair.

12. Apr 3, 1911

    Travers is indicted.

13. 1914

    A bluish Lincoln is used at Vera Cruz, Mexico, on a cover to Pittsburgh, the only such use recorded.

14. May 31, 1926

    Saint-Gaudens's seated Lincoln, the source of the stamp's portrait, is unveiled in Chicago's Grant Park.

15. Aug 2015

    A never-hinged plate block of six sells for $4,250 at auction.

The world in 1909

• Jan 9, 1909

  Ernest Shackleton's Nimrod Expedition reaches a new farthest south, 88 degrees 23 minutes, before turning back.

• Feb 5, 1909

  Leo Baekeland announces Bakelite, a hard thermosetting plastic.

• Mar 31, 1909

  Construction of RMS Titanic begins at Harland and Wolff in Belfast.

• Apr 6, 1909

  Robert Peary, Matthew Henson and four Inuit explorers come within a few miles of the North Pole.

• Apr 11, 1909

  Tel Aviv is founded on the outskirts of Jaffa.

• Jul 25, 1909

  Louis Bleriot flies across the English Channel.

• Aug 2, 1909

  The U.S. Army Signal Corps buys the world's first military airplane from the Wright brothers.

• Nov 28, 1909

  Sergei Rachmaninoff premieres his Piano Concerto No. 3 in New York.

Price record

A price-guide value is an editorial estimate, not a transaction and not an asking price. Guides lag the market and smooth over grade and condition. It is neither a floor nor a ceiling: a sale can land above or below it, and it should be checked against a realized sale before anything rests on it.

By reference price, US 1909 2c Lincoln 'Bluish Paper' is number 91 of 100 in the stamps entries of the FLOAT 100. 82 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (35 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The Lincoln centennial stamp does not say "Lincoln" anywhere on it.
• The statue that supplied Lincoln's face was finished in 1908 but did not reach Chicago's Grant Park until 1926.
• The "bluish" paper is really a dingy gray-blue. Collectors spot it by laying the stamp face down on orange paper.
• Tiny black specks in the paper, which look like flaws, are actually a good sign the stamp is genuine.
• Leaked archival sheets of the bluish paper led to the dismissal and indictment of a senior postal official in 1911.
• The paper was meant to stop stamps from shrinking, curling and tearing in post office drawers. It did not work and was soon abandoned.