Upside Down Precancel

This is a dumb question, but I have a US #642 with a heavy upside down CHICAGO ILLINOIS precancel. Is this rare? I have many precanceled stamps but none of the precancels are upside down.

It is definitely an interesting curiosity, but in a big city like Chicago accidentally precancelling stamps upside down was, while not common, a regular mistake.

The correct term is "inverted" precancels and they are very common. Here are some other examples:

Thanks smauggie and wt1!

What about a precancel without the city or state?

"Mute" precancels were quite common with the transportation coil stamps.

Thanks so much smauggie for the information! Now I'll know in the future that those aren't worth anything.

The term for the 2nd displayed precancel is "silent"! Smauggie you were going the right direction! You should not make the assumption that any stamp maybe worthless, they are never worthless, There are many precancels examples that are valued over $100.00, you just need to study & learn!

Also no Question is Dumb!

Hi themachine99! The silent precancels are far from worthless! If you check on for instance the "Sleigh" precancel, you will find some astonishing prices for these modern stamps. These are the so called "Plate number coils" or pnc's. They are collected in strips of 3 or more that show the plate number on the middle stamp.
Also, they teem with problems ( varieties or EFO's ). Your example above for example has a broken and an almost broken bottom precancel line. To a specialist collector that is a collectable variety!

Peter

O.K., Good to know! I have found a couple strange precancels that I hope to post here soon.
Thank you everyone for the help so far!
This is a terrific community! I just love all the help and information given here!

Here's a double + inverted cancel
I just posted in another thread...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/PRECANCEL-I...em2c864b8cb3

Here are a couple of invert #1384 precancels from my collection



The one from Baltimore is a #1384m and Scotts lists it at $700. The other is so 'rare' that that do not even list it!

Sadly, and only after I dug around for additional info on these, their rarity may be questionable. It seems that that may actually be printers waste that were never really released for sale at post offices.

Nonetheless I thought them interesting and went ahead and made a new page for all the 1384 precancels in my album. If you keep an eye out you can occasionally find a few for sale on ebay.

(But don't pay the $950 that this listing is fishing for!!
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1384m-XF-SU...em2c676cc330 )
don