Recent High Priced Purchase....

Here are a few very scarce NJ precancels I recently bought. My NJ type wantlist went from 14 to 8. I hope to get another [or more] at the precancel convention in August.

Nice ones! I had never heard of Oldwick, NJ until I just looked it up and find that it is the corporate headquarters for A.M. Best, the insurance rating agency. I wonder if they were that was the user of the precancel, as the choices would have been limited for a community with a population of only 177.

chasa,

very nice precancels indeed! Happy hunting for the rest you need!

As someone who is totally unaware of the value of precancels, I am sure that I would not have given a second glance to the stamps. The stamps themselves are not special.

There is so much to know. I wonder how many precancels are simply discarded by the unaware.

Very true! The thing about collecting precancel collecting is that the focus becomes the overprint (precancel) of the stamp and NOT on the stamp itself.

Precancels by their very nature are almost always on common stamps because precancels were intended to be used in quantity, typically on mass mailings.

The challenge is to find that special overprint. In some of the larger cities, there can be as many as 75 different precancels for one city. It's not just the name of the city that's important, but the specific precancel type for a given city or town that is highly sought after. Some precancels aren't worth pocket change; others are worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars. I believe the ones shown above would be on the upper end of that scale.

Boy, it's ia field I know very little about but the precancels are cool and lowering a want list is always great fun!