US Precancels -- Are These Unique?

Chalk this post up to having been looking at precancels too long and having no catalog to referece. Anyway, among the thousands of precancels I've looked at recently, these four seemed to me to be rather unique...but maybe not:



Stamp #1 (Ferndale, NY) seems like a relatively small town (pop. <800). I know the post office still exits, but I would imagine the number of precancels from that town wouldn't be that extensive.

Stamp #2 (Atlantic City, NJ)...Is it common that the "City, N.J." should be on the same line?

Stamp #3 (New Orleans, La.)...Is it common for such a wide gap in the double line precancel?

Stamp #4 (Baltimore, Maryland)...Is it common for such a wide gap of space between city and state name? (Also, it appears that both "Baltimore" and "Maryland" ends in a period.)

I know there are tens of thousands of precancel varieties and most are common, these just seem to me to be a bit out of the ordinary.

The Atlantic City, NJ stamp is a Bureau precancel - the other three can be found in the PSS Town & Type catalogue.

Atlantic City Bureaus come in two styles, one on two lines and an earlier style on three lines. Style 72, which you have, isn't found on too many cities - it's the same as Style 71 except the city name is carried partially on the second line, thus requiring a comma between city & state (Style 71 doesn't use any commas). Your stamp is listed in the 2005 PSS catalogue as #806-72, valued at 25 cents (minimum catalogue value is 15 cents).

Town & Type precancels are listed in the 2007 PSS by town only, not by individual stamp. So, the cheapest variety is what determines the price - it's possible, for example, that your Baltimore precancel might be very common on one of the standard postage issues but very uncommon on that postage due stamp - the listed price in the PSS catalogue would just reflect the common issues. There are specialized catalogues available for many states that list every combination of town, precancel type and stamp. Some particular issues (e.g. black Hardings, apple green 13c, Washington bicentennials, double line electros, even those later precancels with initials from Montgomery-Ward and others) also have catalogues with that much detail. Trying to show that much detail for every stamp issue, however, quickly becomes unmanageable due to the high number of different issues (now estimated to be over a million different). The last catalogue to attempt that was the Hoover Brothers Official Precancel Stamp Catalog, with listings complete up to 1935 - by that time, the catalogue was already up to over 1850 pages in total.

In the PSS Town & Type catalogue, the minimum catalogue value is 10 cents. The Ferndale, NY stamp is listed as type 712 (20 cents). The New Orleans, LA stamp is type L-5 (10 cents). The Baltimore, MD stamp is type L-6 (15 cents). The catalogue mentions that this type does have an error that can be found (city name misspelled as Baltimoer), but it doesn't mention a period after Baltimore (the design shown in the catalogue looks like it has a comma there). The types with the "L" prefix were locally contracted, so the considerable difference in design is due to them not being subject to any sort of government standardization, I suppose (type 712 was federally contracted and is found on precancels from many other towns as well).

I do have a copy of both volumes of the Hoover Bros. catalogue, through great coincidence (found at a Christmas Seals dealer who lives two blocks away from my girlfriend in the middle of Ohio, of all places). The Ferndale stamp is too new to be listed. The New Orleans stamp gives an idea of what I mentioned before - the cheapest stamp with that type is listed in Hoover at 10 cents (not much value appreciation, exactly the same as in the 2007 PSS!), but the one you have is listed at 20 cents. The Baltimore postage due precancel is listed at a whopping 1 cent - oh well.

I find precancels to be endless amounts of fun, searching through all these catalogues (regardless of the fact that I usually end up with only low-value stuff).

Ryan

Refresher: All types with a number <100 are Bureaus with the precancel overprint being supplied by the USPO directly distributed to each PO.
All types 100< had the device to create the overprint distributed from the USPO and then applied locally.
All types with an "L" prefix were when the device was ordered by the local postmaster through a local provider as requested.

Thanks for all the info. on these precancels. I knew there were thousands of varieties, I just never knew there was such a detailed study involved based on the specific issue. I suppose most are of minimal value; although I know there are a few that command much higher premiums.

Unfortunately, I neither have the resources nor the space to obtain all of the various catalogs for precancels that I know are out there, so I just try to work around it. The best resource I have found are the downloadable precancel album pages offered on one of the precancel web sites. At least it helps narrow down the number of different varieties of precancels known for a given city.

You're right, there is a lot of fun connected with precancels. In fact, with the help of internet searches, it has given me a new appreciation for very small towns across the country (some with populations of only a few hundred) that I would have never even knew even existed, if it weren't for seeing the names on precancels.

I started a very basic list of all of the different cities and towns I have found when going through precancels. So far, the running total is 659 different cities/towns...and that doesn't count the various issues from the same place or all of the duplicates involved. If that's my corner of the precancel universe, I can only imagine how many there must be!

Small town PO's with precancels are possible because there was some mass market mailer handled by that PO. A common situation, in small towns, were companies selling "seeds" through the mail, most of these, not all, locations were from small rural towns.