Rochester, New York ??? What Am I Misunderstanding Here?

I have a whole bunch of Precancels that look like these:




But I can't find them in the Bureau or the TnT reference books. In fact, I can't find anything for Rochester where the State name is written out in full.

So are they really not Precancels? I know they can't be rare, because I have so many! But not being precancels at all??? That seems awfully unlikely. Can anyone enlighten me?

I don't have much information for you, except to point out that both of the above scans are definitely precancels. I have copies of both examples, too (but on different stamp denominations).

I believe the first one is a Type 233 (Local Type) and the second a Type 43 (Bureau Type) ... (technically, 43A, as I understand there is a variation noted with the State name written out rather than abbreviated.)

Rochester was a reasonably prolific user of precancels in its day. In fact I have several Rochester precancels with perfins "EKCo", as in Eastman Kodak Company, the camera and film people who are headquartered there.

Half right - the purple stamp is PSS-233, the green is PSS-219.
There is clarification note in the PSS-200 series descriptions that says the state may be abbreviated or in full on these. This is just a common sense approach to the problem of too many style numbers. All these Rochester's are 'state name in full' - although the stylechart pictures show abbreviated state names.

Thanks for clarifying the PSS number on the second stamp.

As long as we're on the subject, what are the parameters to tell the difference between a Type 43 and Type 219? I went back to look at a Type 43 illustration against that of a Type 219 and they both look similar. Perhaps the clue is the comma in the city name? Or is it in the overall height of the letters? I'd just like to know what to look for in the future when identifying my own Rochester precancels.

Luckily for identifications, there appears to be only one city with BOTH 43 and 219 style, Brooklyn NY. These are cropped from my album. The 219 has a comma and the letters are stretched taller. They are very similar.

Thanks for the Brooklyn examples of the differences between Type 43 and 219. I have these two Brooklyn precancels:



Using your illustration as a guide, the first one would be a Type 219 and the second one a Type 43.

As for Rochester, it seems I don't have a Type 43 example, but here is a Rochester precancel I believe to be Type 219:




Do I have these identified right?

chasa -- does this mean that each town only uses one type (e.g. Rochester always has NEW YORK in full)? Or do some towns have both the full state name and the abbreviation? Because if the latter, doesn't that mean the album pages would need two spaces with the same PSS number, but actually intended for two different stamps?

I'll defer to chasa to respond to your question, but I just did a quick look at my NY precancels and all of the Type 219's I have from Rochester (and I have a half dozen or more in different denominations) all have "New York" spelled out. Other precancel types from Rochester typically use the abbreviation "N.Y.". It doesn't mean to say there weren't copies with the abbreviated state name on Type 219's, but based on what I see, I would venture to guess they would be much less common.

Very good question about 'state name in full' [SNIF]
When a type exists with state abbreviated and also SNIF, it is listed as two entries in the catalog. The SNIF version has a footnote-20. You can search the computer database for all footnote-20 items. It turns out there are only 15 such types listed - here is an example of one: Mineral WA PSS-904.

As long as you used the Mary Lyon stamp as an example, that stamp was issued in 1987 and it appears to be a local rubber stamp applied precancel (type 904). Wasn't that after the peak of use of most precanceled stamps? I thought by that time the use of such precanceling was more or less over, and that stamps pre-printed with the words "precanceled" took over for businesses that had need for such items.

Yes, by 1987 [some would say 1967!] precancels were 99.9% collector fueled. It was fun visiting post offices and getting current stamps precancelled. Many precancel devices were still available. Friendly post offices provided service for 'write-in's. The 2-cent Lyon stamp is well liked because it displayed precancel impressions so well [and was cheap!]. A collection of many thousand precancel varieties can be formed on just the Lyon stamp so many were done. These are uncommon at 'regular' stamp collecting shows, but at precancel shows they are plentiful.

I have a stamp similar to the purple 50c. However the space between the lines on my stamp is 12 mm, which would make it a Type 232 (not listed for Rochester in the T&T catalog) rather than a Type 233 (11.5 mm line spacing).

In addition, the lines on my stamp appear to be 1 mm thick rather than 1.1 mm thick. But as I am using the mm scale on an Honor-Bilt perf gauge, I question my capability to measure to the 0.1 mm with it.

Any help in figuring out what I have is appreciated.