ID A Perfin On 2c Washington.

I don't have any perfin catalogs or pamphlets. Was wondering about this one.

General Electric [GE]

Hah, excellent. I thought it was a C and sideways H. Might explain why I couldn't find it online.
Thank you. I would assume GE would be quite common.

Very common

Thanks folks!

The lone perfin that I have in my collection is on the Edison Light Bulb (#654). I like the little bit of advertising history behind General Electric's purchase tens of thousands of them to use on their outgoing mail. I checked my to see if there was any difference between yours and mine. Curiously, my stamp's perfin has one small difference. On the three bars that create the legs of the letter "E", mine has two perforations on the middle bar rather than the single one on yours. This leads me to ask if there are at least two varieties of this perfin? Seems that way to me. Anyone else notice this on their examples? Gee, does this qualify me as a "flyspecker"?

There are quite a few variations of the GE perfins. 50+ if I remember correctly. Unfortunately I don't have the pertinent literature yet.

Many various aspects of knowledge pertaining to this hobby are inaccessible without paying relatively affordable up to unaffordable amounts for most people. The costs are justified, but are frustrating to many. It is yet another barrier making it more difficult to get into an already difficult hobby.

if you have 1 perfin, its best to ask here.... if you have a thousand, buy the book :)

It is like any other item(s) you want to collect. If you are serious,take the time to learn the situation that surrounds your interest field. Yes it may or may not cost a bit, but show me ANY hobby that doesn't have a cash outlay? It is better to learn from a book than to try and learn from 10+ people telling you how they think it should be. Just my 2 cents.
P>S> Perfins are NOT a hard subject, it just takes a little reading. There are excellent publications out there that can break down most of the bigger countries. The smaller ones take a bit of looking around (but can be found).

I gathered these four examples from previous threads on this site relating to "GE" perfins:



As mentioned earlier, the one unique feature of the perfin in the original post as compared to the above examples is that it lacks two punches in the middle bar forming the letter "E" of "GE". I assume this is a yet another variety that identifies the specific "GE" location using that perfin.

Can anyone identify the "GE" perfin in the original post as to its place of use?

(I don't have any perfin catalogs either, although I do try and identify a number of my own based on internet access to perfin listings, ebay sales or through forums such as this.)

And in my defense wt1, the lack of those punches had me searching for a C and H perfin.

The original stamp is undoubtedly G72-1 from Schenectady NY [as seen in the postmark] with one hole mispunched [considered a fault by specialists].

Faulty...should have known lol.
Thanks.

Thanks, Chasa, for the confirmation of the G72-1 Schenectady, NY perfin on the original posted stamp. It is also good to know that there is a missing pin in the perfin which explains why it looks so much different than the others posted. (I had though, apparently incorrectly, that maybe it was some sort of ID code to identify the origin of the perfin.)

I'll keep this information in my perfin file for future reference.

Thanks again.

OK, this should sum up the GE perfin.

There are currently 55 known valid pattersn on the GE perfin.
Here is a master chart of the locations of all the holes:



This chart courtesy of the "Catalog of United States Perfins".

The pattern differences are with one or more of the holes added to the standard pattern. Some are rare, some are very common.

Several other companies have similar multi pattern perfins, with International Harvestor being the most proliferate in the US (with well over 100 different patterns.

Hope this helps.

This is all quite amazing! Never imagined what a broad specialty collecting perfins could be. Thanks for all the great information.