Great Fancy Cancels Or At Least Funny

Now I call these classics cancellations. It is nice to see some postmasters had a sense of humor and or more time than they should have.

Lovely examples of FUN in the day. Just curios, as I don't have a good example. It appears that the letters on the bottom of each don't match? The left stamp looks like RWM&E while the right looks like RWM&X. Is this the plating location?

Look at the bottom post of this thread for a similar one! - https://goscf.com/t/725&whichpage=1...ancy,cancels

here's a pic of it. It's certified too if you read further into the thread.



Check this one out (same thread) I think it was either Russ or T360 that posted this one on a Fancy cancel thread awhile back.

I **LOVE** that hand-drawn cover! Seriously, how cool is that?!

Wonderful! Thanks for showing them.

A modern version??? Remarque....

I have often wondered how many of these are the result of the handiwork of children who were given an old used envelope to use for their doodles. If you follow up on the item that has the PF cert, it does not certify that the decorative marks were part of the process of cancelling the stamp. It is entirely possible that the original pen cancel was the starting point for an elaboration by another hand after the fact of usage. For example, I am guessing that the original Post Office applied cancellation on the left stamp of the two at the head of this thread was nothing more than one or two horizontal lines. Someone else with a bit more time on their hands had the inventive imagination for the rest. In the stamp on the right, the large central sweep, probably without the hook at the end, may have been the extent of Post Office handiwork. That line is out of character for all the rest of the marks in the group.

They are entertaining curios, but in many if not most cases they cannot be certified as part of the original cancellation.

They do raise the question though about how and when "fancy" cancellation really began. Has anyone read anything that addresses that question with some kind of evidence?

IMHO if you can not say they were not in fact done by the post office you can in no way dissociated it as an official hand cancellation.

Thus until they can be proved otherwise they should be counted as official cancellations.

Sorry, the convention doesn't work that way in business or in scholarship. It is not considered "good" until proven otherwise, but rather "not good" until proven to be good. If one has evidence to support the claim that an item was done in a Post Office as part of the official handling of mail, one must produce it. Otherwise, it is no better than somebody's guesswork. People don't pay good money for somebody's guesswork, and you can't build a reliable history on it.

I don't make these rules, I just know them. From hard experience in some cases.
No since fighting it or about it.

cool!

Hand "manuscript" cancellations were not always just simple marks, X's or series of lines. Many postmasters added their own style prior to the hand stamp.

Here is a fine example from my home state.

Reminds me of a fern. Nice looking cover!

You're missing the point mkfarm. I did not doubt that such things were sometimes done by postmasters. But the fact that they are sometimes done, does not equate to the confidence you seem to have that because some were done by postmasters that all such candidates are to be understood as postmaster markings by default. The PF did not take that position in their assessment of the submitted example we were discussing. In my opinion that is merely good scholarship on their part to hold out for evidence.

Though not able to examine it directly, I have no reason to doubt that the example you showed is a postal marking, because in the image it is uncompromised and there are no alternative marks available to confuse the issue. Assuming that it went through the mail at all it looks proper for the time and circumstances. But the off cover examples, cute as they are, present another problem. Similarly, the elaborately decorated covers are problematic if we suppose that some local postmaster applied all that in the name of cancelling the stamps.

You want to believe that they are postmaster produced, I get that. But until someone can show a basis for making that claim in those particular cases, we can only look and wonder, and wish we knew. Unless alternative explanations can be eliminated from consideration by some sort of evidence, we cannot pretend to know how they came about.

That said, they are nice to ponder.

As we know many many early stamps where canceled by hand. Like I have said not all were just a simple pen mark. I think when you put it in perspective common sense is that there were many different designs added. A project that I am only half way completed has come up with many neat cancellations.

From the great pre-state of Hawaii I bring you one of the more rare and sought after manuscript cancellations. The LAUPAHOEHOE HILO.

full manuscript cancel of "LAUPAHOEHOE HILO". This is possibly the best example of a named manuscript cancellation on an early Hawaiian stamp. This was one of the few that have survived and was called one of the newest most important discoveries.

Laupahoehoe is a small village in the district of North Hilo on the north east coast of the Island of Hawaii.

I love doodle cancels! However, I agree with essay's statement that there is no way to know exactly who created the cancels. Attributing them to postmasters or postal employees is an erroneous conclusion. It could just as easily been (or more likely actually) the person mailing the letter.

I collect manuscript doodle cancels on U.S. revenues. However, unlike with postage stamps, one *can* attribute their creation to employees of the companies in question, as revenue stamps were never sold or released to the public.

Point well taken revenuecollector. I have a check with a postage stamp used instead of a revenue. Off cover, so to speak, it would be hard to understand if you did not know about illegal revenue use of postage stamps.


I recently declined the opportunity to purchase a cover from the period of the Bank Note issues in which the stamp bore a rather small strike from a standard killer, but no corresponding town mark. Instead, the name of the town was hand written on the cover next to the stamp. I do not recall whether it was dated or not, but let us say it was. (Now I think I should have picked it up for its illustrative value.) It's not too hard to IMAGINE what might have happened. The canceller had not been well inked, barely hit the stamp and left nothing on the cover. So the clerk finishes the job by hand. Or so we might imagine. But is that the only scenario that could account for what we see? As a matter of scientific principle an explanation is not accounted as fact until it has eliminated all alternative explanations consistent with the evidence.

I have raised a question about the necessity of the assumption that all the doodles we have been seeing in this thread NECESSARILY came as postal markings at the hands of postal authorities. There is a large body of evidence to say that manuscript markings were a normal and accepted part of postal handling. It can be shown that this condition remained throughout the 19th century. But all that evidence merely raises the possibility that any such marking on a stamp off cover MAY have been generated by postal authorities. Nailing it down is more difficult, even in situations where we might not expect it to be.

Here is an example to consider. It is an item I purchased a few days ago, because of its distinctive nature. What do you make of it? How do you account for the manuscript markings?