Cancellations? C 1896 -1897

I'm beginning to think that Grandpa's focus was not so much the stamp, as the cancellations. Can any one suggest where to go to find information about US cancellations... such as in this mini collection? .

Much of the earlier stamps thru 1940s are this embossed type with a fair number of cancelations with sort of football shape and various numbers and letters. I've literally pounds of cut envelopes... what do I do with them?

I have this book to be extremely helpful: "Postmarks on Postcards, An Illustrated Guide to Early 20th Century U.S. Postmarks" by Richard W. Helbock. It work well with regular covers and even some of the late 19th century. there are other books too, but this one is fairly accessible and affordable. In the first picture, all the cancels with diagonal lines are Barry machine cancels. The other is an American Postal machine cancel. All the flag cancels in the 2nd photo are American Postal machine cancels. The one in the 2nd photo with horizontal line killer bars is an International machine cancel. That goes for the same for all the cancels in the 3rd picture..American and International. Too bad the whole covers were not saved, but people usually did this to save space and fit them into whatever album they had. The cancels with the football are probably different types of duplex handstamp cancels although I've learned there a rarer machine cancel out there that looks like a duplex..starts with an L..have to get back to you on that one.
Will

...collect them

I think you are so fortunate to have Grandpa's collection
passed on to you, you lucky devil.
Those are some lovely eclectic cancels with no doubt some
history behind them.

I'd be mounting them on plain paper with buff quadrille
and inserting notes with pencil, as information becomes available.
Well done Grandpa!

Thanks much, both of you. Likely I'll be letting some of the wealth go once I get a better handle on things. Grandpa was Secretary of a Stamp Collecting Club thru the mid 50s... his better books had been submitted to competitions and won high honors, which, sigh, went to my brother. Maybe I can/ should wheedle them back?

Bf,

It looks like you inherited a very nice postmark collection!

There is an APS affiliate that specializes in postmark collecting. http://www.postmarks.org/

Depending on your preferences, there are a lot of ways to collect postmarks. http://www.postmarks.org/members/pref.htm#FC

The PMCC has a very informative monthly bulletin too. Take a look and come join us!

Dan