Agreed on 50's.

Yes 50s, but a Late 50s Small Stamp.

http://black.net.nz/avedis/avedis-gallery.html#small

But it is not a "trans stamp" if you mean the Transitional Stamps as originally named by Bill Hartrick. It's easy to rule out Trans Stamp because it says U.S.A. rather than U S A without the dots. There are other diagnostic reasons it isn't a Trans Stamp as well if you want to read up up them.

http://black.net.nz/avedis/avedis-gallery.html#trans

thanks for the link and ID!

Yep. Zenstat is correct. It is definitely NOT a trans stamp. Trans stamps are pretty easy to spot because of how deeply they are impressed on the left and right of the stamp. The extreme left and right side of the Arabic script as well as the Z on the left and Co on the right in Zildjian Co. will be unmistakably deeper than the rest of the stamp.

Just for future readers:

I agree, but would suggest a slight change from "unmistakably deeper" to "commonly deeper but sometimes only a little". That's why I added those other features to look for. I think this example makes a pretty good counterexample to "unmistakably deeper" which is why I have it on my site under the detailed examples:

[img]http://black.net.nz/avedis/images/z-trans-III-50-52.jpg[/img]

I've also got examples (not yet posted on my site) of non Trans Stamps which have confused people because the edges are a little more pressed in. So only looking at whether the left and right are both pressed in more firmly has a low level of both false positive identifications and false negative identifications. But we can do better.

Using all three criteria (more pressed in on left or right side or both, no dots in USA, close up Turkish Cymbals to ZILDJIAN Co)

[img]http://black.net.nz/avedis/images/trans-14-stamp.jpg[/img]

gives the highest level of confidence in identification. We've moved on a bit since a decade ago.