Washington Vending Machine Stamps?

Are these vending machine Washington stamps?

Yes. They are Schermack Company Type III in the Scott Specialized Catalog in the section on Private Vending Coils. They are the most commonly-found of the various private perfs on US stamps. Yours are either Scott 344 (if a double line watermark) or a #384 if a single line watermark.

Thanks Bill! I just got done reading about these. Very interesting.

No ! They are not vending machine stamps. They are affixing machine stamps. There is a difference.

Early vending machines ( US Automatic Vending, Brinkerhoff )were designed to sell stamps to the general public. They had very little success as the small profits couldn't offset the original high cost of the machines.

Affixing machine stamps (Schermack, Mailometer, Farwell) were designed to apply stamps to envelopes at a high speed for the large mailers of the day. They were labor saving devices. These machines were capable of affixing 250 stamps per minute. They were very successful and lasted 20 years before government rotary coils and stamp meters ultimately eliminated them.

The most current book Guide To United States Vending And Affixing Machine Perforations 1907 - 1927 by Steven Belasco is available through The United States Stamp Society. Very interesting and the go to source for collectors of this area.

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing!

It is shocking if you read back into early stamp history of these and other things like precancels the volume of mail that was being sent by some companies at the turn of the century, some of these places had mailrooms with numbers of girls just to affix the stamps and get the outgoing stuff sorted.

At their peak, Schermack was perforating 5/6 million stamps per month.