1/2-Cent Postage Due With Unreadable Printing In Cancel

Talk about examples of unreadable printing in what appears to be a cancellation of some sort. Can anyone decipher this? I tried to rotate the image in what I believe is the correct orientation and blew it up and used a higher resolution scan all in an attempt to enhance the printing, but it hasn't done much good:



Any ideas?

A precancel

Almost looks like it says "auckland" but I cant make it out and I been trying for an hour or so now! lol







edit: spelling correction

If that is the bottom it is the state or if itis upside down it is the city po.

Same image flipped (not that I think it will be of much help):

Try replacing the red with white or the blactk with another color. Also playing with the contrast might help.

If you don't mind I gave it a shot, still hard to make out though.

I don't think this will help but you never know. Maybe someone can make this out?

Thanks everyone for your help, but I think it's time to move on.

I've tried some of the "tricks" with color, contrast, etc., too, but got no further than what is posted above.

Personally, I would say that yes, it could be a precancel of some sort. I've played around with the possibility that maybe the cancel was a variation of "Philadelphia" but couldn't get that to work. If you stare at it long enough, it looks as if it could have been a date such as "Aug. xx 19xx", but that didn't work for me either.

I usually don't give up on things very easily, but the bottom line in this case is that it's a cheap stamp with no particular value even if the "cancellation" were deciphered, so I'll leave it at that. Every once and awhile we collectors get stumped, as in this case.

Thanks again to all who tried to make something out of this.

Your welcome wt1. I wish I could be of more help but if it is of any consequence I printed out that B&W image and neorev's and tacked it up. maybe it'll pop out at me sometime or some one else that see's it? It was fun anyways.

You're welcome, that's a tough one though.
I_Love_Stamps did you use photoshop to get those results?

believe it or not, MS paint. I blew it up, over exposed the image and manually removed the stamp pattern by referencing the original in wt1's first post. took 2 hours...lol I was bored.

Wow, ok. I was wondering because I have PS but haven't figured out all the tools yet.
I can understand getting lost in a project

That's way too much time spent on such things! (At least I was able to cancel your boredom, though!)

well my daughter was out for the day and it was raining out...lol I just wanted to help out.-

There is another way to determine what precancel this was meant to be, by look at the date of use of the PD. Then cross reference with known precancel version.
Just saying!