Bullseye And Socked On Nose Cancels

A couple from Upper Silesia:






and not completely popped on the nose, but a train cancel, so interesting in its own right. ("Zug" is German for train):




Train 84, canceled on St. Patrick's Day (which may not have been a big deal in Upper Silesia...then again, on St. Patrick's day, everyone is a little Irish).

Here are some soc's and bullseye ones.

Here's a modern piece...FDOI SON cancel:



Actually, this "modern" piece is fast becoming a relic ... "P.S. Write Soon" is no longer the acceptable norm because of e-mail ... which is the very reason why the post office is in the financial position they are in (and why we stamp collectors keep searching for the disappearing use of stamps on our daily mail.)

can't get much more socked on the nose than that!

Here are some, what I think are Scott, 207, but certainly Socked... Everywhere. They, I think, are pages of certain cancels, but I'd love to know more.







I don't believe these have watermark.

Hi Barb,

While some of yours are 'socked on the nose' (SON SOTN) as the term is used in stamp collecting, a lot (most) of them are not. Socked on the nose means that the cancel (whatever type it is, usually a circular date stamp type for modern post 1900 stamps) is well-centered and does not hang off the edge of the stamp too much. All of the information contained in the cancel is readable (hopefully) and clear (hopefully).

Your first scan has a lot of cork (make from carving a round cork shape into a personalized cancelling device)(the worlds first personalized stamps, lol), also known as 'fancy' (as apposed to non-fancy or plain old CDS or barred lined cancels) type cancels, usually used prior to 1900 or so (not sure exactly). Some are well centered and deserve the SON term.

Mostly I think the SON term came about from having a cancel that was centered over the full frontal face representation of a President or King or Queen on the older definitive stamps. When the person is turned sideways on a stamp the term SON means well centered , not really socked on the person's nose. More aesthetically pleasing, nice to eyeball so to speak.

Same with newer rectangular stamps, well centered. As if there were a person's face facing you on the center of the stamp.

Some folks call these SON type cancels 'Bullseye' cancels (as they are centered on the center of the stamp, just as a bullseye is in the center of a target) and get them confused (or the term is used to mean two different things) with another type of your cancel selection, the target cancel (concentric circular rings) (what I call the target cancel anyway), looks like a target on a shooting range or for bow and arrow).

The terms are used loosely sometimes and everything is OK as long as everyone knows what is being talked about.

The cork fancy cancels were used to obliterate the stamp to prevent reuse and on a cover sometimes had a circular date stamp cancel to show that the piece of mail have been handled at a particular post office. One stamp in your first scan (on the right side) shows both types of cancel on the stamp. Good example, but of course much better on cover, for us nit-pickty types.

Some collectors collect these fancy cancels, books are written, displays made of them. They do, if well centered (SON) command a premium from these collectors.

That is most of the 2c green Washington (I think that is him) stamps.

The 1c blue Ben Franklin stamps have some fancy cancels (strictly speaking I mean carved-in-cork cancels when I say fancy, some people use the term more loosely to mean varying types of eye-pleasing cancels), but mostly seem to be arranged on the page just to store them that way and perhaps to let them be seen altogether to help pick out colour variations or cancels? Also same idea with the 2c red Washingtons.

Everything seems to me to be a study of cancel types, whether partial or fully struck upon the stamp. Nice to see, thanks for sharing.

And once again, the Puzzler makes sense and learning fun! :) Thanks.

Here's a SOTN I just got in the mail....




Dave N.
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Found this documentary with a pretty good SOTN. I know some of you know how to accentuate some cancels or lettering but I have been fussing with this thing for a half hour and still can only read the 1899 and a couple of letters FL. Anyone else get a better grip than me?

Thats sweet Jeff...don't usually see them cancelled like that !!

Looks to me like "Post & Flagg", a New York City banking / brokerage firm.

Ryan

Yes it does Ryan and thank you very much!

Here are three cancels from London (1900), Liverpool (1894) and Stoke-on-Trent (1897) respectively.

Nice SOTN from Algeria. Nice overprint too, if anyone knows what this is, please let me know.



another Algeria

Here are a few NY unfortunatly the ovals are to big to be fully socked. Any info or stand outs would be interesting as cancels are still a mystery to me. The special delivery although it is hard to see has full wavy obliterator and in the corner is square with 8 dots like a die (dice showing 6 plus 2 dots in the middle.