Ux27 - Printing Freak Or Genuine Error?

I can see how this card might have been printed, but is this a common printing error, uncommon, freak?

looks like a major trimming error.

they must have used a two step printing process, because look at any normal early postcard and see where things should be.

Mis-cut error. Nice item but not particularly rare or valuable.

Edit: I seem to remember reading that this is the result of the sheet being turned 180 degrees before cutting. Does anyone else rememer this?

I have one of these cards (normal, I'm afraid) and the backs are blank, for writing on. I guess the blank side doesn't offer any reference for cutting.

If you have access to the large sheets of (uncut) postal cards available to printers, you can make such errors yourself. You'll waste a few cards, and it requires some careful measuring and precision cutting, but the end result can look exactly like yours.

Those were made by stamp dealers or others with acess to uncut press sheets. It is an interesting curiosity, but not an error.

Not really "uncut press sheets." Simply uncut sheets readily available to printers for the past 100 years or more. A HUGE amount of direct-mail advertising used to be accomplished by penny postcards.

As long as doug2222 posted an example of the John Witherspoon Postal Card (Scott No. UX69), can anyone explain to me why all of the "Patriot" postal cards of the 1970's and 1980's are considered "precanceled" with the three printed bars as part of the image design?

I've always wondered about this corner of postal stationery collecting, as I remember using these postal cards back in the day and they weren't restricted for use as precanceled stamps are today for only high volume mailers with proper permits, etc. In fact, I have examples of these postal cards with machine cancelled postmarks, which makes me wonder why these "precanceled" postal cards were issued that way in the first place.

Just a little corner of postal history I've never been clear about. Does anyone know why they were precanceled?

I didn't know that they were precanceled. I don't know... Perhaps they thought it was a way to cut down on expenses for canceling the mail? (Canada, the uk and australia have found a nifty alternative to save canceling charges; not canceling in the first place, or with pens) They also did this with some of the Christmas definitives from 1970 (or is it71) and the Christmas dove self adhesive of 1975.

I will have to post a picture of a normal UX27, but I believe that the "This side for address" is not in the place it should be if it was cut wrong.

Sure it is. A quick (and approximate) rearrangement of the parts. The red line represents what should be the actual trim line.



If we trim along these lines and shuffle, you get what the card actually looks like.



Again this isn't accurate, but if you compare it to your normal card they should be pretty close.

Thanks James.

The net result to the original question is:

For those issues where full sheets of postal cards (usually 40 cards per sheet) were available to the public, such items as the card in the OP should be considered as manufactured varieties. They are usually easily available in the philatelic marketplace and not expensive. To be very specific: many cards were cut to odd shapes for philatelic purposes.

This isn't to say they couldn't have "happened" in the normal production of U.S. postal cards, it is just that it would be impossible to prove it. In fact several issues have similar items (though, in these case, less "perfect") that everyone agrees very probably were real errors, but cannot be proven, so they end up in the "oddities" end of the EFO spectrum.

Consult a detailed postal stationery catalog for those issues that were made available to the public in whole or partial sheets.

Thanks all for your opinions. I will just classify this as a oddity.