US Slogan Cancels

PLEASE DON'T STOP POSTING--MANY WATCHERS--I WILL POST IN THE FUTURE AS SOON AS I GET MY SCANNER WORKING? THANK'S FOR ALL YOUR POSTS-

Okey dokey.

Just joining this topic. I have always thought slogan cancels were a very interesting topic to study and exhibit that really doesn't cost a lot of $$$. But it is fun and interesting and as this thread shows there is so much to study. I have shown three from my collection. I have a pretty large specialized collection of these advertising slogan cancels from the 1939-40 New York World's Fair. These cancellations were used at several post offices around New York to publicize the 1940 season on the Fair.

Here are three later slogans I picked up recently.

Here's a nice slogan cancel from Greenfield, Michigan. The font doesn't look standard, though, I'm wondering about the legitimacy of this post office. Greenfield Village, adjacent to Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, is a re-created 1890s town -- but no one actually lives there. If I recall, Ford moved Edison's early laboratory to the site, hence the postmark.

The signature is George H. Neisler

My undertanding is that the Edison postmark is a hand cancel, not machine

So, was the Greenfield postmark more of souvenir cancel?

Yes, a big celebration was held that day. A web search containing these words

greenfield edison golden jubilee october 21

turned up several interesting online websites.

Sure looked like a machine cancel to me,
https://www.goldbergcoins.com/m/lot.../lot/148495/

rod222 raises a good point for discussion of machine vs handstamp.

The literature attributes this to a handstamp, and I agree. With only 1 copy at hand, the quick glance might say "machine", but when several copies are compared it becomes more obvious that this is a handstamp. Here is a copy I had handy:



Clearly the postal clerk did a good job of making good impressions which generally resemble a machine. Now having 3 scans posted, one would expect near-identical cancels if this were a machine, however:

1. All cancels from a machine would be parallel to top edge and the same distance down from the top. The cancel on my example is too low and angled, and essentially impossible to feed and get a low impression.

2. The horizontal displacement of the cancels should also be nearly identical as each mail piece passes through the feeding mechanism of the machine. This is not exhibited with these 3 examples either. I do suspect the clerk aligned the hand-held cancel against a jig block to get many of them very close to parallel, but the left/right consistency is not there.

Additionally, the font and style of the dial does not come close to matching any then-current machine.

Nicely explained John,
Once again it did not occur to me distance from top, although you answered that a few days ago.

I thought the circular date stamp dodgy, and the cover you have shown,
indicates the handstamp well, with the slip of the bars.

Yeah, the bars on my example are wonky. No doubt this device is made of rubber, but still not quite sure how they managed to make the impression they did!

I was considering that too, I must say quite a good effort, the dial as you call it, as well.
Some sort of reverse moulding.
Australian modern "click" and press cancellers are rubber I think.

Making a rubber stamp...

George H. Neisler was postmaster of Dearborn, MI, not specifically "Greenfield". So I think this was probably more like a show cancel for the event. But why they went to the trouble of making a hand cancel look like a machine cancel is puzzling. Maybe to give Greenfield Village the appearance of a real town?