Interesting Scott 65? Cover

I purchased this cover because of the usually shade of the stamp and the very strange postmark. Perhaps someone with knowledge of postmarks and Scott 65 varieties can provide some additional information about the stamp and or cover. The post mark appears to be
1834 and the brown shade may just be oxidation?
Thanks in advance for any responses.

Weird. This stamp wasn't issued until 1861, right?

A Bath postmark from the 60s without year.

Yes, issued in 1861. Perhaps the postmaster was having a bad day?
Additional scan of the stamp.

It's a lovely stamp, though the centering is wonky.

I found a similar example on ebay. http://www.ebay.com/itm/US-1864-BAT...AOSwc3ZUo1Hp

My guess is the postal worker accidentally put in a 3 instead of 6.

Just an inking or damaged "6" digit variety. The year-date slug was a single piece and contained all 4 digits, 1864. It is not a 3.

The 1864 shades for this issue are some of the most complex but some of the most beautiful. You get into a lot of the lake shades in 1864 and then there are a couple of claret shades. Many of the shades are much deeper and much darker than any other year in 1864. Problem as we've said many times it is very difficult if not impossible to make any kind of a guess as to what kind of the shade it would be over the Internet. I have several similar to this one and it could be a lilac and it could be a dull claret or it could be a lighter version of one of the lakes, but the lakes are usually lake brown or brown lake and tend to be a lot darker than this one.

Regardless a very pretty stamp!
Hope this helps...Ray

If it was a damaged 6 wouldn't that mean it would be facing the wrong way? I would think its not an inking issue as both stamps seemed to be about the same. If it was actually a broken 6 or 8 wouldn't the middle be thicker like the middle of the 8 and not such a straight line?

Whatever foundation one builds upon, it must start with the year date being a single slug containing all 4 digits. It is not made of individual loose digits. So the year slug can be inserted either all upright or all inverted. Clearly from the 18 portion of the year date, it is inserted upright. Thus the 3rd digit definitely started out as a 6.

So why does the 3rd digit in the year date appear the way it does? This is where opinion and speculation can start. I believe most answers have simple explanations and conclude there was a small clog of dirt on the right side of the 6, which took up ink and essentially completed the gap to appear as an 8. How the left portion of the 6 does not imprint is difficult to say without the device at-hand (now impossible of course), but damage is the most likely culprit. The postmaster wasn't too good at adjusting the device as evidenced by the poor insertion of the day indicator in the center.

Thanks for the additional insight. I had a few other 65's that I lined up with the cover stamp(one on the left) so the color differences can be seen better.

I don't profess to be an expert on the hand stamps. It just seemed like the "3" was a little too much like a 3 and less like a 6 with dirt on one side and ink problems on the other. It just seems like the curve on the upper right part of number seems to be a fairly solid curve, and that if the middle of the number was a 6, it seems like the line itself would be thicker like the middle of the 8.

It would be interesting to see a collection of postmarks from Bath to see when the year was first added. It would be a baseline, at least, for knowing the age of this cover.

I agree, KBG. I've searched a little, but didn't find anything useful. John is right that the year slug is one piece for the entire year, so there is no way that is a 3. There would not be a slug for 1834. I remembered seeing upside down 8s on date (not year) cancels, so I had assumed the slugs were individual numbers.

If we had earlier examples, we might be able to see that 6 change over time.

No offense, but we all can see what it "seems like." The deeper question must be, "Of what can we be sure?" Your focus is on the appearance, and your approach is to guess. I think we have more going for us than that. See below:






Considering the way a 6 was often formed in this period, it would only have required a small fragment to bridge the gap between the upper curve and the lower body of the numeral) to create the appearance of an 8 or a three on that side of the figure.

I am inclined to think as you about some kind of adhesion affecting this numeral, but for another reason. A single adhesion could well have been in position covering much of the center of the numeral at the time of inking but before the handstamp was applied to the cover. If all but the bridge portion of the adhesion had cracked and fallen off prior to applying the handstamp to the cover, then the left side portion as we see it would not have been inked, resulting in the colorless portion we see. So the inking of an adhesion seems to be a key to understanding how this may have occurred. While we cannot be certain that this is what actually happened, it is perhaps the simplest single explanation for both phenomena at once. (Occam's razor).







I would need to see more evidence of the probability that this happened gradually, and not in a single event, before I would attempt to gather the kind of material evidence this proposed hypothesis would require.