Federalsburg Precancel - Help Please???

So I confess to being a bubble head about precancels, but I enjoy learning about them. This one was new for me. I could only read FEDERALSBURG. I looked it up and saw only a Fedealsburg for Maryland. So does anyone know anything about this one? Is red ind the norm for Federalsburg. Is Federalsburg a common precancel. Any help is appreciated. Thanks as always. Jeff

I cannot comment on the stamp you have scanned, but I can tell you that Federalsburg, MD is known to have had several different precancels. I have a few of them of more standard type than the one you have scanned.

In fact, the Precancel Stamp Society has album pages suggesting that there were at least 10 different types of precancels known for that town.

Back in the day, Federalsburg, MD was also the home to the American Philatelic Society, so that has often been the reason to explain the seemingly large quantity of precancels that are known from that community.

You have a Federalsburg PSS-414. These are not scarce as the basic precancel books for 0.25 The red ink is less common but not scarce. The fun starts with all the denominations this precancel was used on, expecially early coils. One of the best ways to identify oft-faked coils is to use a known copy from Federalsburg as a reference for size and cut. I am trying to put together an exhibit of these - here are some examples:





There are nine different precancel styles from Federalsburg. The catalogs list over 40 denominations with the PSS414 precancel.

This has always been one of my favorite Federalsburg, MD precancels:

thanks wt1, you always have something valuable to contribute.

Just came upon another example (an L-type) I didn't know I had:



Anyone know which L-type this one is?

wt1 - it's an L-1TS Cat's at $1.00

Thanks for the info.!

Perfect timing on this. I picked up the following set from my local dealer a month ago. I don't normally do anything with precancels, but these caught my attention. Furthermore, they are full gum, mint never hinged.

No idea as to value, but I thought they were unusual.

Here is a block of nine gone haywire...

This block shows both the 'FFDERALSBURG' and the 'FEDERALSBUBG' errors as well as inverts.

How is that block of errors possible? I mean how can the city name be in one direction and the state number in the other? Was it intentionally done to make a philatelic oddity? Were they ever used like that? Do they command a premium catalog value? How many varieties exist?

These are 'typeset' - printing plates made up of individual letters like oldtime newspapers. The user was in the printing business and VERY tight with the postmaster. Oddly the Burnell catalog does not list all the varieties but the PSS T&T lists it succinctly as L-4 TS(4,9,BG,FF,14). I'll ask Bruce why he gave up on describing all these.