Duplex US Postage Stamp Vendor

Not in the greatest shape, I know, but is anyone familar with the Duplex U.S. Postage Stamp Vendor by the Midland Supply Company of Davenport, IA?



An interesting Cinderella. I did a web search and came up with an auction site where somone was selling a Model K (wooden and glass construction with plunger to dispense stamps) for around $1200, suggesting it was a rare vending machine. It looked as if it dispensed 2 cent stamps, so I'm guessing it's late 1880s or 1890s vintage.

I assume this was a test stamp for the machine.

Here is a link to a picture of a duplex stamp vending machine, but of a different brand name.
http://flockweb.com/Coinop/descript...ckduplex.htm

That is a very yummy Cinderella!

It's not a test stamp, it's the joining tab, that maintains
the coil from unwrapping prior to installation.
Or, if you will, the "leader"
A very tasty piece of paper.

Allow me to correct myself,
(memory chip failure )

There seems to be a new word creeping into philately,
This is a US "Dummy" stamp
and as you say was probably a stamp from a roll used as a demonstration.

I had trouble recalling the last time I saw these,
and I had them under "affixer" as that was a common
reference text string, downunder at least.

There is a web site out there for US under "dummy" stamps

Here is an article from the NZ stamp club "The Captain Coqk"




Others

If you want to trade this, I would be interested. Just shoot me an email.

As a further comment to this post, I did further research on this stamp vending machine and came up with the following ad that appeared in a 1916 pharmacy fixture magazine:



Not the greatest scan, but at least it dates the product.

I have a few US Test stamps in my misc. stockbook. When I first encountered these I thought they were somewhat rare. I was mistaken of course and learned the purpose of those "For testing purposes only" coil stamps. They are an interesting area to collect as they don't come up that often in most dealer stock.

For Auction 24th september

Australian Testing Coil Pair CV:ACSC $300 Reserve $200