Tell me what you can about the item below. This image is the only piece of information you have, and it is at full size. If you saw this on eBay, how would you proceed?

Giving you some spoiler space so as not to give it away…

There was enough fuzziness around the edges of the stamp that it bothered me. Although the odds were very much against it, I thought it was worth checking out. I asked the seller if he could send me a closeup of the stamp in order to check the cancel (didn’t want to give anything away). I prepared myself for the disappointment of a munged R112, but sure enough, it was what I thought it might be. The R112b sewing machine perf is insanely scarce on document.

I laid in the weeds, set a nuclear snipe, and ended up being the only bidder.

Moral of the story: Always pay close attention to pictures and don’t be afraid to ask questions if you think something is “off” (although be careful in what/how you ask).

Interestingly enough, the stamp appears to have two different dated handstamps, the better centered of which matches the date of the certificate and ties to the document. Looking at other stock certificates from the same company during the same era revealed the same thing on a few regular R112-stamped certificates, so I don’t know if they were re-using stamps or what.