Quote:
I believe the cancel on the 2 40 cent stamps is called a doughnut cancel
Quite true. This is a mute doughnut cancel (mute because it does not give the town, state, date or time of the cancel). These are most often used to cancel registered envelopes, odd-sized envelopes and parcels.
Cover #1 - Concentric Circle rubber killer stamp These are used for cancelling stamps by hand when necessary (usually when the machine cancel does not cover all of the stamps on the envelope). It is called a "killer" because its sole purpose is to make the stamp un-reusable.
Cover #2,4,5,6 These are, as Bob indicated, Duplex Hand Cancels. The reason they are referred to as duplex is because they have two parts: The circular datestamp (CDS) and the killer. These sport the ubiquitous "football" killer. There were many shapes and sizes of "football" killer used. In larger post offices, the football will have a number in it indicating which postal worker cancelled that piece of mail.
In big cities, they had a General Post Office which was the headquarters and procesed mail from surrounding zip codes. Some mail items were mailed right at the GPO and received the GPO cancel.
Cover #5 From the Grand Central Station postal annex. Apparently people on trains sent alot of mail.
Posted 06/26/2012 4:31 pm
