1923 1c Franklin With "Shanghai China" Cancel

What is the significance of this "Shanghai China" inscription between the killer bars?

I know overprints were done for US offices in Shanghai, but were regular stamps also used there?

A US postal agency located in Shanghai, China, had postmarked this stamp (appears to be a parcel marking). There are other postal markings on US stamps (many Washington/Franklins are known with Shanghai postmarks).

Thank you orstampman.

This stamp is a little more interesting than it at first appears. It is not one of the Washington and Franklins, but is a booklet stamp from the fourth Bureau issues. The first day for the flat plate 1c was Jan 17, 1923, and the EDU for a booklet pair is Dec. 21, 1923. However, according to Scott, the Post Office in Shanghai was closed in December 1922. Somehow this canceller continued in use after the office was closed for as much as a year?

Anybody know the story on that?

Bee See - I will wager you have a portion of killer from a Navy ship post office. In the 1930s and other years, too, FPOs often used killers, some even quite fancy, to showcase the ship's location in port or going to or coming from various foreign ports. If stamps off cover from the 1930s showed a cancel of "Nova Scotia" they might fool many collectors.
This is the only one I could find on short notice.
Bill

PS - I couldn't post a scan of the entire cover (too large) but it is pmkd USS Tuscaloosa 1939.

I agree with Bill. It's part of a naval postmark. Many US naval vessels visited China in the 1930s, and a group of US Navy gunboats (the "Yangtze Patrol") served on the Yangtze River in the 1920s and 1930s.

Wow, very interesting! Thanks all.

Interesting speculation, perhaps, but until we can point to an actual ship cancel that corresponds to what we see on the stamp, it is just a supposition. Parallels are one thing, but if they don't get us to this marking then they are a sidetrack. The cancel you mention and discuss above is more than ten years too late for this stamp. For these ship cancels we need to get back to the early 1920s.

Meanwhile we need to ask about the configuration of the cancellations noted in Scott that had been in use at the Shanghai agency when it was still open, and for who knows how long afterward. Two of them are duplexes, as I believe the ship cancels are too, but one is a parcel post roller. What do these cancels look like? Anybody?

Here's a probable answer. I found this cover currently for sale on ebay:



For more on the USS Truxtun's service, checkout the link below. The time period for both the cover and the original posted stamp with partial postmark seem to fit the US Navy Destroyer's service in the area in question:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Truxtun_(DD-229)

The Truxton is a good candidate since it began to serve in that region in 1922, and had a canceller with a similar killer configuration in 1932. If we can demonstrate that configuration back in 1923, then we have a good candidate. I do agree that seeing these data makes the ship cancel idea more plausible than late use of an agency cancel after it was closed.

This the kind of discussion that makes collecting used stamps so much more interesting than collecting mint. Every used stamp has a story behind it. 99% of them it's a common machine cancel but every now and then we get a clue as to something more. Without the entire cover we'll never know for sure but the fun of the speculation is worth a dozen MNH stamps.

The stamp is a 632a perf 11 x 10 1/2 rotary press booklet pane single first issued in 1927. The lighter yellow screen shade in the scan suggests that the stamp was from a booklet printed sometime after 1930. The cancel does not resemble any of the four known cancelling devices (2 duplex, 1 oval and 1 roller).

Clark

Thanks Clark. That's the other way to wrap this up, bringing the issue date of the stamp into the range of the cancel evidence. Given the similarities in the style of the cancels shown here, it does appear that the stamp has some of the killer portion of a ship cancel, which would account for the wording. As to which ship that might have been, and when, I leave that to the sleuthing of our ship cancel society members.

My initial set of questions got answered, and I thank you one and all. Good job!