Check Out The Air Mail Cancellation On This 6 Cent Garfield

I dont think it's any kind of rarity, just think its cool with the air plane on it.

It is a cool postmark. I have several of these, and they are neat.

Definitely a cool cancel, I have a few

Known as AMST [air mail saves time] cancels, bi-plane and mono-plane varieties.

There are hundreds of varieties of the airmail saves time slogan machine cancels, which were widely used on both International and Universal machines. The Pre-1940 ones are covered in the Payne book on slogan machine cancels. These make for fun hunting in dollar boxes (and elsewhere for more interesting or unusual uses on postal history of the era).

One of the original references on this topic is a Handbook:


Classifying the U.S. "BI-PLANE and MONO-PLANE" Slogan Cancels, by Vi Vandenbloom, published in 1979.

There is also on the APS website in their Exhibit Section an exhibit titled:

The types and Uses of the International "Air-Mail Saves Time" Slogan Cancel -- 1924 to 1941., by David Reitsema, 2012, 98 pages, 16.4 MB

Which can be downloaded as a PDF file.

Go to URL: http://stamps.org/United-States-Exhibits

and scroll down a few exhibits.

This is a fun area to collect. I played around with it for a while many years ago.

Here's one I own on a fold out postcard

I always like these cancellations. They are quite common and were used by the post office to advertise the advantage of paying extra for air mail service for your letter or package. These cancellations were used at regular post offices on all kinds of mail. The ones that are harder to find are those with cancellations from the Air Mail Field and Airport Mail Facility stations located at larger airports. These are all listed in the American Air Mail Catalog Fifth Edition, Volume 2