Pick A Favorite

HERE ARE MY FAVORITES...
1st photo....7c Stanton w/Pittsburgh, PA SHIELD
2nd Photo...#209 10c Jefferson...w/ Weston, MA - "W"
NICE!

I like them all but then again I like any type of cancel on the older stamps.

Thanks to everyone for sharing your favorites with me. I also appreaciate the kind remarks. A couple of notes. Several of you commented on a purple Maltese cross. The purple cancel on the 1c in the first pic is actually a notched quadrant crossroads cancel. The color combo is pretty though.

The face with rays in the second group is the "Smiling Sunface" cancel from St. Louis.

I must confess I have some doubts about the N/S cancel. It's unlisted and almost too perfect to be true.


@zipper


Yeah that was one of my favs too. It turns out that the "crescent and dot" (which I think of as "Sun and Moon") is from Stoneham, Mass.

@chipg



right on all counts




@kevin504



The shield on the 7c Stanton is actually a NYFM (Weiss RE-E2). I think the Pittsburgh cancel you have in mind might be the one they used to call the Goff-Hursey patent cancel (which is now regarded as a machine prototype). Maybe?

I just LOVE the last set of fancy cancels!

Really dumb question here...On the fourth stamp to the right...is that cancelled with blue ink? Or is it an attempt to remove (or lighten) the cancellation chemically?


-IBFS

Not at all dumb. Glad you asked.

I assume you are referring to the 10c in the first set, top row, fourth from the left?
If so, the answers to your questions are "no" and "no." Any attempt to chemically lighten the cancellation will have an effect on the stamp color. That however appears uniformly normal in comparison to several other examples. The reason the cancel may look odd to you is that it is not blue, but ultramarine.

Well, we're a week into October and its been a while since I put out any more fancy cancels. How about something seasonal to the month this time? The stores are gearing up with spooks and goblins, and soon the houses will be decorated with spider webs, skeletons and carved pumpkins. There's a cancellation for that.




top row, L-R
1 Smiling pumpkin mask
2 Jack-O-lantern
3 dog/wolf mask
4 larger sun face (St. Louis)
5 Devil mask on 6c (New York)

Bot row, L-R
1 Hand carved Skull and crossbones
2 Man in coffin (Harrisburg, PA)
3 Skull and crossbones (ready-made)
4 Skull and crossbones (late) (ready-made)
5 Profile head and neck (man facing right)

Comments:
top
what I am calling a wolf mask is unquestionably a mask of some sort, but is not listed in Cole.
The St. Louis sunface here is of a larger size than the one I showed in group 2 above, and is either interrupted by a four-bar grid, or has a halo but also with 4 rays emanating out from the face. (My money is on the four bar grid.)
The devil mask is of the type Cole lists as JO-90, but is unusual on this denomination.
bottom
The ready-made skull and crossbones here were sold to postmasters for use with their cancellers.
The stamp with the profile figure has a cert for the cancel. Not sure what it corresponds to in the existing catalogs. [edit: I should have looked at the cert again. It equates to JO-135 in Cole. And sure enough it looks like it.]



I thought I would supplement these with a few examples on cover.




1c shows a ready made skull and crossbones in duplex with the famous West Gardner MA shield. The bones are beneath the skull but obscured by the deeper shading of the stamp.

2c shows a negative feature skull and crossbones in which the bones cross behind the skull.

3c shows the full version of the devil mask design which Cole lists as JO90.

Trick or Treat!



Added: This little guy just arrived in the mail and looked so forlorn I just had to include it with the others



Hand carved, but would you call it a one-eyed skull and crossbones?

I think it is a normal two-eyed skull obscured by the rare, fancy cancel double transfer.

That's my read of the situation too, Sinclair.