Talk:Basel Dove

'Haube auf Taube' error

The illustration shows a dove looking to its right, the viewer's left. This does not agree with most illustrations, which show the dove with the letter in its beak, head toward its left, the viewer's right.Fconaway (talk) 19:35, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Here are some web sites that show Basel Dove images and I see that the top image here [1] shows the dove with the beak touching the left wing while ALL the images here [2] show only images in which the beak does not touch the left wing or nearly touch the right wing. Sandafayre, even if you don't like them as dealers, is more likely to be using the correct image, so you may well be right. In the meantime I will look at some of my other sources here. Have a look at this David Feldman auction page that has an expert certificate which tends to prove your questioning of the current Wiki image. What are you actually looking at that makes you say this is not the correct image? ww2censor (talk) 19:52, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I was comparing the illustrations found in our "External Links" and our "Reference" to Klasboe. I don't have any of these stamps, and have even less knowledge of them, but the illustration didn't "look right". The famousstamps.org site is unreliable: it has numerous errors. Feldman's auction lot is about as authoritative as anything we can find. I doubt that a die variety exists, but I don't know.Fconaway (talk) 20:59, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

As I said, I will have a look at some of my sources and see what else I can find. If it is wrong we should update the image with an appropriate proper image. The Swiss Museum for Communications shows a nice block of 15 that is not like the Wiki image, so it really looks like we have the wrong image. TTFN ww2censor (talk) 21:35, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

One auction (Corinphila Zurich, March, 1997 Lot: 81) had a pair of the Basel Dove, in which the lower stamp seems like the one we illustrated. See: http://www.corinphila.ch/content/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=46&Itemid=137&lang=en I hope it is true. Even so, it would be an exception, or variation on the die.Fconaway (talk) 22:30, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I saw that one but dismissed it because if you look at it carefully you will see that the beak faces to the right, however there does seem to be some white enlarging of the left wing or back of the head but it definitely does not look identical to the wiki image. I will stick with you comments that the wiki image is inaccurate. Do you have access to a specialised Swiss stamp catalogue? ww2censor (talk) 22:45, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

No, I think the Corinphila image solves the mystery - the description calls it a plate error "Haube auf Taube" or "cap on dove". Ideally, we should give the top place to a hi-res scan of a normal stamp, move this image down as error example, and grab a copy of the Corinphila scan for commons, for future reference. Stan (talk) 23:37, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Interesting, now that I look at the wiki image again, I see there is a beak facing right and touching the right wing as per the normal stamp, but there is a large white blob connecting the back of the head to the left wing, so, as Stan says, the wiki image is a plate error. I just found a vertical pair in the book Treasury of Stamps: 1,200 Rare and Beautiful Stamps in Color by David Lidman (1975) isbn=0-8109-0469-1. The image shows a normal and an error where there is a similar large white blob that is just touching the bottom left of the shield piece that comes over the dove's head. In another position, if it was a little lower, it could well make the plate error we see in the wiki image. Thanks Stan. ww2censor (talk) 00:30, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for this investigation. We will change the image for the Russian article, too. Cheers, --Michael Romanov (talk) 00:45, 30 December 2007 (UTC)