page_title: Series of 1902 (United States postage stamps)
section_title: Imperforate stamps and coils
hierarchical_section_title: Series of 1902 (United States postage stamps) / Experimental variants of the issue / Imperforate stamps and coils
caption_attribution_description: Private perforations on 2c Series 1902 stamp
context_page_description: The Series of 1902, also known as the Second Bureau Issue, is a set of definitive postage stamps in fourteen denominations ranging between one cent and five dollars, produced by the U. S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing and issued by the United States Post Office. Two denominations appeared in November and December 1902 and the other twelve were released between January and June 1903. These stamps were assigned the Scott Catalogue numbers 300 through 313. Also considered part of the series is a fifteenth stamp which appeared in November 1903—a second version of the 2¢ value, the original having faced severe criticism. This series, particularly noted for its exceptional ornateness and opulence of design, remained in circulation until late 1908, when it was superseded by the Washington-Franklin Issues.
context_section_description: The early years of the 20th Century saw the development of technologically and commercially viable stamp-vending and stamp-affixing machines; and this phenomenon had important effects upon methods by which several stamps in the 1902 series were produced--particularly as regards perforation.  Because it proved impossible to devise machines that could reliably handle the 100-stamp panes of perforated stamps normally offered by the Post Office, vending manufacturers asked the Post Office instead for imperforate sheets of 400, which they would then cut into strips and incise with special types of private perforations that were more easily handled by machine.  Accordingly, the Post Office produced imperforate versions of the 1¢ and 2¢ stamps (both released in October 1906), with imperforate 4¢ and 5¢ stamps following in 1908.  (These were the first imperforate postage stamps issued by the U. S. since 1856.)  Also in 1908, the Post Office experimented with issuing coil strips of 1¢,  2¢  and 5¢ stamps for use in selected vending machines.  The 5¢ issue appeared only in "vertical coils" (i. e., the coil was a single stamp wide, each stamp was imperforate on both its left and right sides, while perforations separated the bottom of each stamp from the top of the one below it); the 1¢ and 2¢ values, however were each offered both as "vertical coils" and "horizontal coils" (stamps side-to-side separated by perforations, imperforate top and bottom).  For two reasons, these 1908 coils stand among the great rarities of philately: first because relatively small numbers of them were produced in the few months before the 1902 series was withdrawn from sale; second because coils were so novel a phenomenon that philatelists and stamp dealers did not yet recognize them as separate collectible varieties and so, made no effort to acquire them (surely some stamps were discarded that collectors and dealers might have preserved a year or two later).  Even the most common of the 1908 coils, the 2¢ horizontal variety, fetches at least $2,500 U. S., and all the others are considerably more valuable, with the inordinately scarce 1¢ vertical coil cataloguing at above $100,000 and the even rarer 2¢ vertical coil valued at perhaps five times that much. With one exception, all of these coil and imperforate versions received separate Scott Catalogue numbers (314-318;320-322).
  The exception, the 4¢ imperforate value, is a particularly notable rarity, because no copies of the stamp in its originally-issued imperforate form survive.  All of these 4¢ issues were incised with private "hyphen-hole" perforations by the Schermack company, and examples of them can fetch upwards of $50,000. Perhaps because the stamp no longer exists as released, Scott did not assign it a separate number, but listed it as #314A (#314 belongs to the 1¢ imperforate version).  The 1¢, 2¢ and 5¢ imperforate stamps exist with a variety of private perforations produced by five companies: Schermack, U. S. Automatic Vending, Brinkerhoff (1¢ and 2¢ only), Mail-O-Meter (2¢ only) and International Vending Machine (2¢ only).
caption: Private perforations (L-R): Schermack, US Auto Vending, Brinkerhoff, 
   Mail-O-Meter, International Vending Machine
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