Comment made at: Tell it to the Marines 004 (reconstructed ifc)"However, I'm not a big fan of reconstructing indicias because one can never be 100 percent certain that something wasn't different just for that issue." That's why it was made very clear that it was a reconstruction, including making it stand out (gray as opposed to black and not blurring it slightly to fully match the rest of the ifc). I don't typically do indicia reconstructions, nor had I planned to do this one, but it was VERY carefully researched and compared with other Toby indicias at the time. For instance, there was an issue of second class mail status changing from pending in #3 (where this indicia was taken from) to approved in #5. This is one area where some educated guesswork was employed. A contemporary Toby series, Flying Leathernecks, had the same issue and it remained pending in #4. Therefore it is a calculated guess that it was the same with Tell it to the Marines. While it can't be certain that this is exactly what the indicia in #4 said, I'd say it's probable. It was created just to make the scan a little more complete and as a placeholder, not a replacement.
-Eric
