Finally! An R53A I Am Content With.

I wanted to hold off posting about this one until it came back from the Philatelic Foundation. The vast majority of claimed R53a on the market are fakes, and there are even arguments that they all are, since there are no horizontal pairs known to exist.

I've handled any number, both with and without certs, and very rarely do I encounter one that seems plausible.

Well, at COMPEX I happened to be going through Gary Posner's inventory and stumbled across this one. I did a double-take, as I could have sworn that I had seen the stamp before somewhere, either in an auction catalog or somewhere online. Thanks to wonders of large-screened smartphones and cellular data, I was able to do some research sitting right there at his table.

As it turns out, I *had* seen the stamp before... almost. There is another R53a in the Philatelic Foundation database, that they deemed authentic, with the exact same handstamp cancels, canceled on the exact same date:



So knowing this, and being able to arrange the purchase on extension (contingent upon the stamp receiving a cert from the PF), I proceeded.

It's not perfectly sound, having a few minor creases, but aesthetically it's very nice, having large margins for the type and being one of the few examples with a handstamped cancel.

That's awesome - Congrats!

WTG Rev very nice find

Nice find, and even better then the other copy with the same date

At best I am an agnostic when it comes to the question of whether this stamp actually exists. Not only are there no horizontal pairs, but in 40+ years I have never seen an example with two truly huge vertical margins. Or an example showing any part of the next stamp over that was not cut in on the opposite side. Neither of these examples if seen would actually prove the existence of the imperfs, but they would certainly help.
For sure this bank precancelled their stamps. Alas, they may also have trimmed part perfs to fit on the documents whose tax they paid. No way to know without seeing some. I would really like to see documents from this bank at some point.
Bart

What your saying Bart that this is the unicorn among revenue's,is there any prof that it's not the real deal,

please don't get me wrong I know you know your revenue's but could there be a sliver of authenticity

I don't care for the way the vertical margins are cut, particularly the right margin, but I did not personally examine this particular stamp. I do have great respect for the people who did examine it, and for their very high level of knowledge.
However in expertizing imperf and part perf revenues it should be remembered that there is a world of difference between "I can't prove it's not genuine" and "I can prove it is genuine".
My opinion is just that, an opinion.

yes,nice cpoirs of this stamp are rare. I do recall seeing a verticle pair in the Cunliffe sale.

Vertical pairs are all that are known, and most (all?) are clearly trimmed from part perf pairs.

I remember the vertical pair in the Cunliffe sale (that's the only one I'm familiar with), and I did NOT like it as a legit imperf.

I have one myself, and have probably seen at least a dozen others over the years. None were good.

An interesting piece of history is that the Tradesman's Bank of Chelsea, Massachusetts was established in 1850 and its name was changed to The First National Bank of Chelsea in 1864. So the dated marking on the example shown would have been one of the later uses of that cancellation.

I am wondering if both of these stamps were actually cancelled on the same document with Dan's stamp being partly on top of the one with the old PF cert?

These cancels were almost certainly done beforehand as precancels, a not uncommon thing to do. Since the stamps were proof of a payment of tax, and in a general sense the tax was paid when the stamps were purchased, it did not matter exactly when they were cancelled, as long as they were on a taxable document and in the correct amount. They almost certainly come from the same sheet, but there is no way of knowing whether they were ever on the same document.