How To Determine Faded Or Very Light Precancel?

I searched the site today and can not come up with an answer on how to determine a faded or very light precancel. UV light? Back lighting? Microscope? I have about 30 precancels that I can not make out the cancel and the stamps are nice. Sorry, no pictures, scanner not working. Thanks in advance, Dan

Dan,

If and when you could get a scan of them, manipulating the colors in a photo editing program is a pretty reliable method.

One such editor that's worked for me is Irfanview (http://irfanview.com), a very nice freebie. It allows an image to be changed to a negative as well as enhancing colors and many other useful things - like creating panoramic views or stacking views. Anyway, its one app that works well.

I've also been successful at times doing the watermark method, or holding it up to light, or laying it on a black surface, or sometimes backing away will help too. I find using a scope of sorts usually clutters rather than enhances because the image is too close, but every now and then I'm surprised.

I do dates on US Revenues and find Irfanview to be a great too for reading the light ones because the image can be magnified with just a click or two. Same process for precancels.

PostmasterGS and GrandpaJohn,

Thank you both for the info. As soon as I get my scanner up, I'll give these method a try. Dan

See the other Dan's thread on retroReveal:

https://goscf.com/t/29210

khj,

Thank you for the info. I checked out the sight and it looks really valuable to me. I will try this out as soon as I get my scanner up and running. From what I see, this is the answer. Thanks again, Dan

The other thing I find handy, probably too low tech so you have probably tried it, is a magnifying glass with illumination. It stuns me how obvious some of them become ...

JanS,

Thank you for the idea. I dug out an old inexpensive lighted magnifier and gave it a try. It helped a little on a couple but not the majority. Dan