Canadian Precancels Collection

I have noticed a lot of interest in U.S. precancels and thought I would offer up my own, very incomplete, collection of Canadian precancels for viewing. There are infinitely fewer varieties of these than with U.S. issues. In fact, it is almost possible to eventually get an almost complete collection of all known varieties, something that would be next to impossible with the U.S.

Canadian precancels were first issued in 1889. Early varieties were cancelled by rubber rollers in various designs of straight, wavy and interrupted lines. It is possible that some of these rollers were made locally and that not all precancels were prepared in Ottawa. In any case, the minimum mailing that would allow someone to purchase these was set at 15,000 pieces, later reduced to 10,000 pieces and in 1906 to a $25.00 purchase (1250 pieces with 2 cent postage)

Line cancels began to be replaced with town and city cancels in 1903 and a printing press was set up in Ottawa to do these. Since then, printing is done at the Queen`s Printer or, occasionally, was contracted to Canadian Bank Note Co. Ltd. or the British American Bank Note Co.

All sales were controlled by the Post Office Department in Ottawa and the number of Post Offices allowed to sell them was strictly limited. Usually, it was locations that were known for handling large quantities of printed material.

For a time, city name types were replaced by Numbers, but by the 1950`s all precancelled stamps were of the Bar type.

At no time were businesses authorized to add company designations to precancelled stamps so location, not sender, is all a collector can discover about a stamp which is not on cover.

Valuation is also a problem. To the best of my knowledge there are not current catalogues with actually estimated values. The best are ones which offer some estimate of Rarity Factor.

Below are scans of my collection. It`s enough to give a taste of what can be found in the Canadian material. If anyone would like to see a better image of specific material or has questions about anything appearing here, let me know and I will try my best to answer.

Enjoy.

Quite an impressive collection. I had no idea that there were that many varieties or locations. The write-up was also informative. Nice to see what someone else has accumulated and has presented in a logical format. Good job !

Very good job ,
Thank you for sharing.
David

Very Impressive!!

Very, very impressive.

Yes, very pleasing to see a good showing of Canada! There is an up to date catalog with prices in Canadian dollars, although like any stamps - pricing can vary considerably from CV. It is published by Unitrade - it is edited by knowlegable collectors.

Very handsome display you have! Very nice.

Excellent collection. Unfortunately, the images are a bit small to really appreciate.

NIce

Yes, I rather thought so too when I previewed the post. Is there any way of posting a page so that detail of individual stamps will show?

I would be happy to edit this so that, say, a third of a page at a time will show in each picture but I was worried that it would exceed a reasonable size for a single posting. 60 pictures !!

These are from my collection, scanned at 150DPI...



It just barely makes the SCF cutoff for image size.

The missing space is for the 5cent violet on thin paper. I also need to add a mount for the 3cent Die 2 normal. My collection has morphed as I have added space for the 1cent and 3cent die varieties. I collect normal and inverted orientation, but not the multiple impressions. I am always looking to add items I need and have tons of nice duplicates to trade or sell.

If you have a collection of pre-cancels do you keep track of them by stamp catalogue number or pre-cancel catalogue number or a combination of both (i.e., link them in some way)?

Typical precancel organization hierarchy for Canada:
City [Edmonton]
Precancel Style [Style-3]
Catalog Number [I use the old sorting scheme were the 1911 issues SC104/106/108, are listed before the 1920 issues [105/107/109 etc, I have the 1911 Edmonton Style 3's on the previous page]

For US precancels, State takes precedence over city, this is not usually the case with Canada Provinces.
FYI the CV for the page I showed is 383$ Cdn.

Beautiful collection and well organized. I put all mine aside in a stock book and have never had the chance or knowledge to re visit. Love the small queens (especially the 50c widow weed) . Maybe have to take some time and see what I have.

Thanks for the tip about the Unitrade catalogue. I shall have to look that one up and get a copy. I am still using an old Walburn publication from thirty years ago!

And a beautiful showing of the Edmonton City type as well. I am envious.

That is one reason why I have neither constructed pages of my own nor ever bought the printed album for these. There would be just too many vacancies left. Using the stockbook allows labels and allows for easy rearrangement of material if and when I manage to find additional material.