Just What Are These Guys Doing?

It looks like a stock ticker at left, but numbers are being recorded next to different cities

It looks like a tickertape in a gentleman's club. Or a dealer's room, maybe. But what great cancels on those stamps.

Terry

Regional bookies reporting in on some gambling enterprise?

The mob?

Terry

Bookies? In Birmingham? I wonder what type of gambling though. All four columns are being used.

It seems unlikely that it is gambling? So obvious on the outside of the envelope, the Post Office would have thrown that letter out, especially down here in the Bible Belt! Also, is there a philatelic reference here, with the plate number attached to one of the stamps?

Peter

Perfed Stamps Printed on Demand in 1929?

Quite a mix of towns; not too often Janesville OH and Albuquerque NM make the same short list, along with Chicago.

I tried travel times (days & hours by rail) from Birmingham, with no joy.

Don't know much about betting, but there are too few columns to be any kind of race results.

I suggest investigating some kind of stock/inventory, eg, how many rail cars full of, say, coal are waiting, moving, sold ...

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey