Classic US Meters

That air mail meter is nice.

The 1994 edition of the United States Postage Meter Stamp Catalog identifies that meter as CA3b. It was produced by three meters: 5660, 6003 and 7390. The rarity factor is R (rare). The catalog value on cover is $15.00.

Robert

Here's a previous link to a discussion on early postage meters in an array of different colors. Toward the bottom of the page is information including the CA3b Air Mail Meter and a brief history of the company:

https://goscf.com/t/18756

Does that air mail meter say 1829??

Obviously, the meter would have to read "1929", so the appearance of "1829" must be due to overinking or some other anomaly. However, here's a blow up enhancement of the corner and, yes, it does look like "1829"!

I didn't even notice the "8". Someone made a mistake setting the date on the meter. It was classified as rare back in 1959 also. I know I didn't pay $15.00 for it. Thanks for all the great info.

The "8" looks a bit odd to me... a bit bolder than the other numbers and somewhat out of place. I suppose, though, if someone set the meter incorrectly, a number that wasn't normally used might show up like that.

In any event, I really like it!

It is common for variations in the impression of the old meters. Just look at how light the "A" is in postage compared to the rest.

I concur, it appears as if there might be some Tom foolery involved here. The 8 is the only digit / letter with the bold ink so how could only one number get over inked ?

I detect some Philatelic Phoolery.

Antonio,
I will bring it to the next meeting. I don't detect any alteration. A lot of the letters are heavily inked as well. I put it under that microscope thingy of mine at 120x and it all looks good. I think it is just plain someone set the wrong number on the dial. I can scan it with higher definition and I think it will show better. I scanned at low resolution to post the entire cover here. The meter impression looks much better and more uniform in person than in my scan.

pjsstamps - I don not mean that the cover was fooled with, but I agree as you surmised earlier that someone put the wrong number in for the year in the CDS of the meter. I am just thinking that it was done as a philatelic joke rather than as purely a mistake.

Does anyone know if the postage meter type shown with the questionable date had the ability to change the second digit? One would think that the first two digits as in "19" would be fixed in the machine and only the last two digits would be changeable, especially on those early machines.

I have no idea about your question, wt1, but I did have a different thought. Could the second digit have been "masked off" so that it would not be imprinted? If so, could someone have then used a hand stamp or something to add the 8 after the fact?

Or am I thinking too much about this?

I may be reading way too much into this also, but given the squared off look of the digits in the year, the second digit in "1929" looks as if it could be an inverted "2" imprinted over a "9". I don't know if there was anyway that anomaly could have happened accidentally or if it was deliberate. But then again, I could be entirely wrong on all counts.

This long after the fact, one may never know, unless of course we can identify other covers with similar imprints.

Smauggie, 30 years ago when I was in the corporate world, I worked at a place where we had a Pitney Bowes machine. There was a guy at the office who will remain nameless,(Roy), that used to mess with the date on the machine all the time just for fun. I would tell him he could not do that, but he thought I was just a crazy worry wart. We would get stuff back that the post office refused to deliver, but most of it went through. I have no idea if you could do that with the earlier stuff. This was in the 80's and early 90's.