Have You Ever Seen A Waif Stamp?

About as far back in the book as back of the book stamps can go, I think.

According to the article below, the printing plates and stamps were confiscated soon after their release, so the stamps shown here are probably somewhat rare.

Jim



https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a...xIN--------1









*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

An interesting story of counterfeit stamps (at least that's what I would call them based on the news article following the image). I wonder whatever happened to Mr. Gordon? He was obviously a stamp enthusiast, albeit a bit misguided and perhaps in need of a good dose of reality. Thanks for sharing! I love learning unusual pieces of postal history like this.

James do you own these stamps?! Very interesting story..what an unusual man.

"with a small but normally shaped head"

Huh?

Yes, just bought them. But they haven't arrived yet from the seller.

Jim

Well that was VERY interesting indeed. The description of the guy was hilarious. I had never heard of these...I learn something every day on here. Thanks for sharing, Jim.

* BUMP *

Thought I would share this with everybody. Recently picked up a FULL SHEET of this stamp.



If single stamps are rare, I'm pretty sure this could probably be unique.

Interesting, just found those stamps on another site dated 2019 by what appears to be the previous owner? He claims copyright to the stated text. Check out:
https://alphabetilately.org/Waifs.html

Note in 1typesetter's sheet(let), Gordon or his sewing machine gave up the ghost. I wonder if any got sent out to anyone outside of southern California?; Burbank and Norwalk are far enough apart as it is, definitely in 1896.

Looks like you can plate the positions, too.

I don't remember this topic when posted back in 2018 and am thankful it was bumped. Very entertaining and cool subject matter.

In our current time when China floods the US with highly realistic counterfeit stamps and little seems to be done about it the seriousness with which the Waif stamps, which were not ever going to be confused with an actual PO stamp, were handled is amusing and almost quaint.

Material like the waif stamps IMO makes for a much more interesting collection if properly described and annotated then does just another Scott numbered run of real postage stamps.

One thing that really intrigued me is the Waif stamps were not done as a folly like so many fantasy items but rather with the creator having serious intent albeit a bit unhinged.

Perhaps without the USPO getting a bug up their youknow, we'd never have any info about these. Recall that in the 1960s, Rattlesnake Island Local Post were told they basically could not use stamps or cancels that could be mistaken for US postage stamps even by being in a rectangular shape. So they went to triangular stamps and odd-shaped cancels. So what about those Christmas and Easter seals that would get mistakenly get used as postage year after year, eh?

Easter Seals are not postage????!!! Ruh-Roh