Walker & Taylor Cancel

My latest ebay acquisition. With apologies to Dan, Bart, and Rusty if I was bidding against you. Very happy to have another ad cancel...

I wasn't bidding on this one. You got a pretty good deal though, it's easily a $100 cancel.

I was able to get one of these last summer, Southpaw, so you weren't bidding against me either. Way to go! As I type this, I'm getting ready for the second part of Siegel's Curtis revenue auction. Lots of fun - I've been able to acquire one stamp so far and that's probably going to be it. In an auction of this prominence, most of the lots are way beyond my budget, but it's still fun to "watch" online.

I was keeping an eye on this one myself, great score.

Nice example with a very crisp strike. I've seen them anywhere from $50 to $150. Finding them on the 1-cent denominations is a bit tougher, as is finding the version with 1870 date instead of 1866; I'm still looking for a nice example of the 1870.

The toughest Walker & Taylor cancel (and also my favorite) by far is the 7-line version that was configured for the slightly larger 4-cent denomination. I've only ever seen one example, and it's the one I bought from Richard Friedberg (and paid crazy money for). I use it as one of the images on my business card. What I like about it is the mention of "Extract of Fireweed" which sounds like something out of Harry Potter.

Of course "extract of fireweed" just begs a Google search:

amazing what you can find these days...