Bullseye And Socked On Nose Cancels

Monaco Scott 167 (1939)


A bit grubby, but the engraving is spectacularly detailed, credited to one Degorge, who has done other Monaco designs and French ones. I could find nothing else online, not even a first name.

Anyone know what/whose ship or yacht are in the harbor?

Netherlands Indies, Scott J18 (1892), type III:


The PALEMBANG squared circle cancel is bigger than the stamp, so maybe this is cheating(?)

Netherlands Scott 251 (1943):


ENSCHEDE cancel, from just a couple months after liberation.

"A bit grubby............."

Yes, I find those Monaco cancels to be really crappy on a lot of the bigger stamps. Vice nice stamps though. I have quite a few that are similar in appearance to yours.

What is with that anyway? Was it the ink they used or just lazy workers in the post offices?

I don't know the reason but after looking at others I have and online, there sure aren't a lot of neat cancels from this time frame and earlier. The machine cancels of the period are heavy and ugly besides. It looks like they didn't clean up the place until the later 1940s when the PO went into the stamp business.

Some Austria.

Small stamps and big postmarks can be trouble, fortunately these were on paper.

1) Budweis(Bohemia) 2) Borgo de Valsugana(Trentino region Italy). 3 Lomnitz a.d. Popelka.(cesloslovenko)

The club circuit books came around today and you never know what you'll find in them.

Over the years though the amount of 'junk' in them has increased and the quality has gone down, but the prices have gone up!!!

Rarely find any great bargains anymore.

One reason I switched from collecting almost everything to mainly cancels is that it limits what you can buy. Yes, every once in a while I'll see something really nice and break the rules, but I try to stay on target.

So today I only managed to find four stamps. Three are shown here and the fourth I won't as I found it had a small fault hidden by the cancel.





One from Switzerland, one from the USA, and one from St. Helena. Hopefully when I soak off the hinges I won't find hidden thins or faults.

So how much did I spend on these three stamps?

A whole A$2.00 or about US$1.50..............

Johan Buvelot, I always liked the bilingual cancels of the empire. It took a while to realize that if the name was identical in both languages, it still appeared twice.

melbourne yankee, the only shopping I like to do is to see if I can find interesting cancels in relatively inexpensive lots/collections. you've done well here, with the US stamp a nice find nowadays.

Nigeria Scott 192 (1965):

Oval REGISTERED OKIGWI cancel, I believe dated 1971. Interesting to me that many British colonies used an oval for registry cancels and here the style was still being used. Stamps from this issue are common enough, good for cancels plus shades and odd color weirdness where the different colors were printed in the wrong order.

Montenegro Scott 10 (c.1874, middle printing):

I'm guessing the cancel reads CETCNYV(?) I couldn't find anything remotely similar. Perhaps someone can point out the actual and/or current name, if it still exists. This is favor cancelled so it could just even read "Cancelled".

Switzerland Scott 164 (1909):

LACHEN-VONWIL cancel. This location is now in a district of St. Gallen, the latter just off Lake Constance (German: Bodensee).

hy-brasil,

Nice stamps from Austria. The country has a huge number of cancels that can be collected and also has a lot of information about cancels in print.

I have a copy of Wilhelm Klein's book about cancels and will eventually figure out how to read it.

I have a few from there, but would like more!!

I also look for decent cancels in lots, but often don't buy them as I don't want to get stuck with the rest of the 'gems' in the lot.

Here are a couple:

First is from Latisana (Lombardy-Venetia) the next from Padova (Padua) - both are now in Italy.

This cancel is from Triest on Scott 46. Dated 19 3 88. A few more millimeters over and it would have been a perfect SON cancel.

And another is a 10kr stamp (p 10 1/2) with a STEINSCHONAU SON cancel dated 21 3 89. (How they managed to get that name on the stamp is unreal!))

Now named Kamenický Šenov and is in the Czech republic.




I have a few more I'll scan and put up later, but the most interesting thing about these cancels is doing the research on the the place that they came from. You can learn all sorts interesting things about the places and people that lived there.

(In other words you can spend hours and hours doing that rather than watching TV, playing computer games, or whatever it is that people do now days for 'entertainment'..................)

Luxembourg Scott 541 (1974):


Remerschen is a small village in the southeast corner of Luxembourg.

The stamp commemorates the Luxembourg Mutual Insurance Federation, if you were wondering.

Belgian Congo Scott 109 (1923)


The larger format of these stamps provide a nice canvas for cancels. Though commonly found, BOMA is nicely struck here, showing the chips and dings in the cancel device.

CAOUTCHOUC in the inscription means "rubber"; the man appears to be cutting raw sheets of the stuff.