Need Help To Clarify A Brunell Wf Precancel Reference

Can anyone interpret this Brunell line for me:

1916 Coils: 1up, 1inv, 2inv, 3, 3hup, 3hinv.

It's not just the h that is confusing me. I am thinking the coils are 486 - 497 (1916-1922)? But could they be #448-458 (1914-1916?).

Oh wait, does the h mean that the first four are the verticals (#490-#492 / #452-454)and the last two are the horizontal coils (#489 / doesn't exist)?

Because if the h = horizontal, that would suggest that these are 486 - 497, because there isn't a 3c horizontal in the 1914-1916 coil set per my catalog.

Plus of course usually (but not always) the date Brunell gives is the first year of issue.

I don't have the coils on my Chart yet - today is the first time I've run across them in Brunell (the quotation above is from Olympia, WA, Type 212).

--Jan

US Precancel cataloggers usually don't concern themselves with watermarks or most stamp 'type' varieties even though they are separate Scott numbers. So for example a 1916 4-cent coil could be a SC457 or SC495. A 1914 4-cent coil would be SC446. The 'h' designation means horizontal PERFS - so 1916 3h is SC489. My preference for vertically perf'd coils would be to explicitly call them 1916 3v for either SC 493 or 494, but Bruce uses a shorthand to 'default to vertical'. So yes: the h means the first four are verticals, last 3 horizontals and specifically SC489.

Great, thanks.

What is Brunell 1965 10d ? I can't find a candidate at all. Cf. Ferndale, WA:

1965: 1, 1¼, 2, 3up, 3dn, 4, 5, 5r, 6rup, 6rdn, 6e,
7up, 7dn, 8, 8e, 10, 10d, 10f, 12up, 12dn,

Also, what does this mean (at the end of Ferndale Type 281):

"Note: This plate was apparently never used by the ordering post office. It was discovered
in the Seattle Postal Museum. The original discoverer only hand applied the plate
(the 1938 prexies). Traveling Press."

I am trying to work out if any of the Ferndale stamps are actual postally-used stamps, or are they all creative works by "the original discoverer". But since the stamps go from 1938 to 1995, they are surely unlikely to be the work of a single mad genius? So how did they come about?

And what is a Traveling Press?

1965 10d is the ten cent Jefferson Memorial (dome).
The reference implies that the Ferndale's were never used on commercial mail - only collector items and even those were not done in Ferndale. There are many precancel devices that never saw 'real' use - postmasters were encouraged to order them for the collector demand. This is less prevalent on the 'printed' precancels in Brunell's book - most of which saw real service.
The 'Travelling Press' is an enterprising collector from Texas who visited post offices and precancelled a large variety of denomination that he 'imported'. Some purists think his material is 'wallpaper', but the increased interest and demand for odd denominations, fueled by the ebay outlet, has made some of these expensive. Only the creator knows how scarce or common any denomination is.
Yes - many of the odd denominations ARE the creation of mad genii, this tradition goes way back in precanceldom. When you can bring your own stamps in to a friendly postal clerk to be precancelled anything can happen. At various times this was perfectly legitimate (not now).

This question made me do some internet research on the "traveling press" and the legitimacy (or lack thereof) of some of these items. I came upon an August 2006 issue of The Precancel Forum that partially explains some of this. The document took an enormous amount of time to download, so I just excerpted the three pages that pertain to the questions at hand, assuming it may be helpful reading on this issue:

Oh yeah, D for Memorial. Shoulda known.

Fascinating informatin -- thanks, guys. I had vaguely heard about a precancel maker (from Brunell's intro, I think), but I didn't know the name T.P. or the details.

wt1, can you post the web address / link, if there is one? I'd like to read the rest and maybe search on from there.

Meanwhile, another couple of i.d. problems:

1986: 50
1986 Coils: 1, 2, 3, 5, 15up, 25fup

There's a 1986 52c and a 56c, 2189/2190, but I am at a loss for a 50.

For the others, I have, from 1987: 2225, 2226, 2252, 2253, but I can't work out the 15 or the 25f -- maybe 2260 and one of 2278/2280? But the precancels read UP on them, so I have been trying to find a horizontal stamp, because it seems vertical precancels are less usual on vertical stamps.

Thanks again.

Here's the link. For a B&W publication of only a dozen or so pages, it took a whopping 12 MB of space to download and took quite a while to get there, too:

http://www.mlstamps.com:88/PSS/buil...t%202006.pdf