637 Or 648 Precancel Chicago

Looking it up in the Scott specialized and on stamp smarter, I could not find the difference. Does anyone know the difference? Is it a watermark?

648 has the Hawaiian overprint
Don

They are both 637 then. Thank you. I cannot believe I missed the overprint that is right there in the catalogue. I was rushing to get some identification in this morning before work.

Yes and no. If you are referring to the two stamps you imaged, you are right.

If the stamp has the Hawaii overprint, it is a separate stamp issue. The overprints were applied to the rotary version of the two and five cent stamps (what would be Scott 634 and 637 without the overprints) instead of creating a specific stamp for the anniversary. This was in the era prior to the advent of commemoratives being a commonly issued format and it was felt that the overprint should be sufficient. If you look in a catalog, whether it is Mystic, H.E. Harris or Scott, you'll see that from 1917 through 1928, there are only 22 commemorative stamps. That total includes three stamps issued for the death of President Harding (Scott 610-612). Prior to 1917, there were the fifteen issues of the Columbian series (16 if you want to include the Special Delivery) issue, the nine issues of the Trans-Mississippi issue in 1898 and a total of 30 issues for the early 20th century. That is the total Scott catalog numbers, as there were two varieties of perforations on the 1914 Panama-Pacific and an addition color variant, while the 1909 Lincoln had three varieties and both the Hudson-Fulton and Alaska/Sewell issue had two each.

So while there were a few commemoratives issued between 1847 and 1928, the total over that period is less than 70 issues total.

Another problem with the overprints for Hawaii is that they are often confused with the precancels, such as the two you show. Precancels are usually the city and state name between lines or bars. There are a few exceptions to that, but very few.

Hope this helps.