Best Catalog To Purchase

I recently acquired a large lot of envelopes that included a lot of precancels. A little research finds that there are many thousands of these. What is a recommendation for a catalog. I did see that there are catalog pages available for printing by state but the variety of catalogs on the precancel site was confusing. Thanks for any advise. Paul

Wheelman, your question tells us nothing. What kind of precancels. What city's. Which time period. All of this is important, and the sheer volume of this area is the reason that there is a precancel society.


Peter

Peter - thanks for the comeback. My question obviously shows my total lack of knowledge on this. I estimate a few thousand all US from a wide range of cities. A quick look says they are all classics as the last Scott I saw so far was #820. I found the PSS Town and Type for US and territories covers over 40,000 stamps? If that is not good I am wide open to suggestions. Really just looking for a way to ID by Scott number, inventory, and get them into some kind of organized album structure. (Like I really need another area of collecting)

A good place to start is with the PSS Bureau and/or T&T catalog(s). And if you have a Windows computer, I highly recommend getting the electronic versions.

I agree with dkabq8 with these additional comments. It sounds like you want a basic roadmap for structuring a US precancel collection. The right reference is the PSS Town and Type catalog - computerized database is preferred. As you say, it will itemize the 42,000+ precancel styles and give a price for a common denomination for each. It will be the invaluable reference to lay out a first draft of pages, whether you keep one stamp for each town (town collecting) or one for each type (type collecting) or everything that comes along (general collecting).

Since there are an estimated 2 million different US precancels to collect, no one book will give a value for every precancel. A precancel can be high-value because [A] it is a scarce type or [B] it is a scarce denomination on a common type. The T&T catalog will definitely help you identify/evaluate all the class [A] scarce ones.

Of less use to beginners is the PSS Bureau catalog which can be frustrating because a good percentage of precancels will not be listed in it. It is what you use to identify class [B] valuable bureau precancels.

You can always post some scans here to get a quick commentary.

The first question would be whether the envelopes themselves are precanceled or are you looking at stamps which are precanceled and then used on envelopes.

If it is the latter, the advice given is your best course of action.

However, if the envelopes are precanceled postal stationery, then you would need the PSS Precanceled Envelopes of the United States catalog.

And don't forget that you can print album pages (hard copy or to a pdf) from the PSS computer program.

If you are looking for information about precancel collecting, which it seems that you are, I would suggest that you research the Precancel Stamp Society"s web site and go through each and every link presented there. The site's information is encyclopedic. It is a good place to start.
Joel