Does Anyone Know What These "City Coils" Are?

They were in a batch of city coils, but the font seems too small and line spacing too narrow to match anything in the TnT catalog. Thanks.

AKRON OHIO is the middle one for sure but the others are almost undecipherable...might almost need your Little orphan Annie decoder ring to figure those out? However I'll try some software to see if I can "lift" off some of the inscriptions. might take a bit though so be patient with me OK?

Chicago Illinois is the first one I can't make out the rest (my eyes are getting bad sorry)



This one is AKRON OHIO





This one seems to be from OHIO as well but I cant make out the name. looks like Siemens (the store) but that don't make much sense if the are precancels but would make sense if they was a type of pre-perfin era "perfins" However I don't think that's the case... I'm sorry couldn't be of more help. sincerely -Jeff

Jan,
Chicago, Akron, Cincinnati

Mike

ILS, I believe Jan S is asking what kind they are. They do not look like the normal precancels with the town and state between two lines, and just one set of names per stamp. I would like to know what they are also, maybe some type of local precancel?

Peter

It's very hard to tell on these guys. I believe what happened here is that the device "stuttered" when the cancel was being applied. Sorry I can't be more help

Peter's right, and I apologize to you all because my request was horribly unclear.

They are indeed Chicago, Akron and Cincinnati, but I was talking about the font. These coil precancels with vertical bars and the city/state running up and down the stamp vertically form a subgroup known as "city coils" (there are some horizontal ones, too, but obviously the vertical ones stand out as being different from most other precancels, which tend to be horizontal anyway).

In the Local (Town and Type) catalog, there is a page that shows the various types of precancel that go on city coils -- there are 15 slightly different vertical types (based on size of lettering, font, distance between the vertical lines, etc.) BUT none of them has a font as tiny as this or lines that are so close together.

I also checked under each town individually and did not find another (not city coil) type of precancel that these could be.

So I am wondering if anyone knows how they came about and whether they are officially "precancels" or something else -- post-cancel, box cancel, etc etc

Sorry again and here is a scan of the catalog page that lists all the types of city coil precancels, so you can see what I'm talking about:

Also appears to be City Type Ladder Variety from what I read in the Precancels Types Guide

Last ditch effort - bumping this to the top in the hopes someone recognizes what they are. Thanks.

Jan-
I found this article in the July 1991 Precancel Forum

It would make sense another type of font style was used, In the examples JanS provided, IMO there appears to be a different font size and 3 individual City and State Ladder Style imprints. It is odd that no records reflecting this are recorded. Perhaps forwarding the scan to Scott's with a question as to it being a new listing might be in order.
Don

My guesses: Akron OH 171, Chicago IL 161, Cincinnati OH 164. It is common for coil machine precancels to get schmooshed up. If you want to be sure you have the right stamp in your collection - buy one that is unambiguously printed [they exist].

Fascinating stuff -- thanks very much everyone.

Although this doesn't help explain things anymore than discussed above, some "small type" coil precancels were mentioned a few years ago on this site at this link below:

http://goscf.com/t/16338

wt1 - just saw this and thank you again for the fount of information you provide.

Cincinnati sure looks more like Cleveland to me.