Took The Plunge Into The World Of US Precancels

Hi.

I only started collecting US precancel stamps about two months ago.
I am finding the collecting of this once ignored area and have to say
that I am finding it both, absolutely facinating and and educational.

In fact I am so facinated that I decided to take the plunge and purchase the following from PSS.

Classic Precancel Catalog, Part 2a, Precancels of the
Washington-Franklin Period, 1908-1921, Database for use
with PSS Computer Program
Item Number 42 $20.00 USD

PSS Bureau Database for use with PSS Computer Program on
Windows.
Item Number 13 $19.00 USD

PSS Classic Precancel Catalog, Part 1, Database for use
with PSS Computer Program for Windows
Item Number 40 $20.00 USD

PSS Double Line Electro Database for use with PSS Computer
Program for Windows
Item Number 38 $20.00 USD

PSS Town and Type Database for use with PSS Computer Program on Windows.
Item Number 12 $39.00 USD

Subtotal $118.00 USD
Postage and packaging $49.50 USD
Total $167.50 USD
Total £107.036

The database is quite amazing, even though I am finding
some areas of the program a bit hard. But being new to it,
can only improve as I go along.

Just thought that I would share this with the comunity.

How many others use this software.

Happy collecting to you all.

GOOD LUCK!!
Happy Collecting!

Thanks Kevin.

Looks like I will have to start buying precancels outside
of the united kingdom as there are not many offered on ebay uk,
although I look everyday or so just in case.

Some times though the postage is a bit of a killer from what i
have seen of the American ones that come up on ebay uk.

So looking forward to learning as much as I can about them.

American Philatelic Society (APS) stamp circuits might have a category dedicated to precancels if you are a member. The circuits are convenient arrive multiple books to your home several times a year. Then you can study and buy in the comfort of your home.

Bimbo, I'm a long-time member of the PSS [and ex-president]. I love their paper and pc-based catalogs. It's easy to overlook what extraordinary effort goes into producing them. Nobody makes money on them, they are sold for cost and for the benefit of the PSS. I use these PC-based almost daily: Town and Type [one for types and one for postage due denominations], DLE's, Classics [for various W/F denominations], and bicentennials. I use them for checklisting [no need to bring paper lists to events], counting [precancel collectors love to tabulate], and album making.

Also if possible, please update the thread title to indicate this is a precancels topic. Took the plunge is vague.

Hi -- Welcome to Precancels! (And welcome to another Brit! I have been in the US 25 years and currently live in Colorado, my 4th state; started out only with UK back in the '60s, but have been collecting US stamps for about 10 years and precancels for about 4-5).

I confess I don't use the database to record or checklist my stamps (yet). I find it too cumbersome and am leaving that for my waning years, after I sort through and winnow the millions of stamps I have lying around here! I *do* find it very useful however for its Search feature that enables me to find names of precancel towns based on sometimes only being able to work out 2-3 letters in the name on the stamp.

The wonderful thing about precancels is that they pretty much go on forever. Yay.

The not so good thing is that a lot of them are in pretty ragged condition. Not so yay.

Anyway, welcome again! There are several awesomely knowledgeable precancel experts here, who are always glad to help (looking at you, chasa, Oregonian and wt1).

Great of you guys and gals to reply on this post.

I have just placed a few bids on some U.S. Precancels from
a United States seller. Nothing fancy, just something to
boost my collection. My wife as never seen me so quite and
studious since starting the precancel bug. If things go well
with my bids and I win a few, I will be placing more bids
and taking up some of the sellers Buy Now! items.

Thanks again for the information and welcome.

The problem with precancels is like trying to eat just one peanut .. you can't stop with just one! There is one word to describe collecting them: addictive!

I don't know if you have thought about how to organize, store and access your soon to be growing collection, but it will become massive.

I made the mistake in the early stages of my precancel frenzy to hinge mount stamps generally by state and city onto homemade 8-1/2 x 11 pages.

Eventually it became more and more difficult to keep track of what I had because sets of certain types became scattered as I mounted stamps as I got them.

The best fix I have found so far is to invest in "Vario" stock pages.
(Black plastic sheets, 8 rows on each side = 128 stamps per page max)

No hinges allow stamps to be rearranged very easily and regrouped as holes fill in. One-inch binders work well without getting too heavy.

Anyway, just my two cents worth. It might be worth consideration to get off to a good start that will allow a collection to grow large and still be flexible.

Thanks to Trainwreck for the original advice.

I began collecting pre-cancels last year, but I only collect those from towns in my home state of Michigan. I also use Vario 8-S stock pages, but I use a 2 inch notebook, I don't fill it to capacity, though. I have between 450 & 500 stamps now, so it is getting harder to find stamps that I need. Most of my collection are the 1920's defins and Prexie defins. I'd like to find more from the Liberty series and Great American series, I see several advertised on e-Bay from Chicago or New York, but rarely from Michigan cities.

My favorite is a C-1 pre-cancel from Pontiac, Michigan (I was raised just outside of Pontiac - in Sylvan Lake if anyone should happen to know the area). It's also the only air mail pre-cancel that I have.

Thanks for the input once again.

At the present time, I have around 6 to 8 hundred precancels that I am sorting,
some will be the same T and T, but once I understand the differences more they
will thin down as I keep the best of each that I have.

I started putting them in a couple of stockbooks with white backgrounds. Then i
realised that a great many of the town names were under the holding area and i
could not see what town they were. So I bought three packs of ten Hanger black
stock pages and started to sort the precancels that were four sided perfs and
two sided perf coils, into seperate areas. I soon ran out of pages even though
they are two sided as I put each denomination in to alphabetical order. This
worked out at twenty six areas for each denomination. It was because of doing
things this was, that caused me to run out of stockpages. So now I am putting
the coil types into one of my double sided stockbooks.

Eventually I plan to put the ones I keep onto printed pages and will put them
in mounts (of which I have plenty of as I bought many thousands over the years
that have not been used. I have so much to learn as at the moment I do not know
which are defins, Prexie defins etc. I presume that the liberty ones are those
that have liberty on them, I may be wrong but will learn as I go along.

I won two of my bids on ebay yesterday and have placed about ten today on the
same sellers lots.

Thanks again to you all that have repleid to this post.

I use black Vario 8S stock sheets, too, and half a line per Type, unless I have a ton of different denominations in which case I allow a whole line or even two +. If I don't have a Type (even an "A" rare type), I leave the half line blank. I keep the sheets with Types that Brunell cataloged in front because there I need more lines per Type since there tend to be more denominations, and easier to find. And then the other Types behind.

Within both sets, I just overlap all the different denominations of a certain Type in approximate date order, identifying them with a small scrap of paper (if I have 11s, 10.5s and 10s of the same 1920s Type for example), so that I don't have to measure them each time I want to work out which series a new stamp belongs to. The sheets are stored in boxed binders. I started a dozen binders, with about 4 states per binder ... now many of my states need a whole binder (or 2) each. I invest in binders from time to time and keep spreading the stuff out. Just counted, and currently have 34 plus 1 unused. Youch!

I am slowly making album pages as I have time, ready ultimately to mount / hinge the stamps ... the problem being of course that other than Brunell's catalog for the Typeset, Electroplate, etc. types (mostly in the 200s and the E types and some of the L types), there are very few definitive catalogs to show how many different denominations of each town were made per Type.

I'll just mention that chasa did a catalog for Alabama that lists each Type by denomination and it's available to download for free via the PSS website. Thanks again, chasa.

Bimbo - thanks for starting this thread, quite interesting to read how all of you are arranging your pre-cancels.

JanS - It sounds like you'll need a dedicated room for your pre-cancel collection! It sounds like hard work - I am impressed with your resilience.

I already had an intention to use Varios' for my own yet-to-be pre-cancel collection, due to it's outstanding flexibility. Reading about how addictive and massive this kind of collection may grow into, well.... maybe I should reconsider, and simply leave all my pre-cancels stuffed in that fat envelope for some more years....

Bimbo - Sorry, I sometimes forget that not everyone who reads my posts is from the USA and may not be familiar with US stamps and terminology. Defins is my own abbreviation that I use because I'm too lazy to type out 'definitive', which are the regular issue stamps (opposed to 'commemoratives'). By 1920's defins I meant the issues from 1922-1929. Prexies is short for the "Presidential Series" issued in 1938 through the 1940's. Yes, the Liberty Series is the one with the 3¢,8¢ & 11¢ picturing the Statue of Liberty, issued from 1954-1961. Didn't mean to confuse you.

Although I have precancels from some 835 different cities and towns in the US (and several types from many of the cities) I don't really collect them seriously. The hoard of precancels that I have were all given to me years ago and when I get bored with other facets of stamp collecting, precancels are always a fun topic to go back to. With all of the different denominations and precancel types and series involved, it's rather overwhelming to think of all of the precancels out there and since it would be virtually impossible to ever acquire a complete collection anyway, I've put my focus on just a few States where I have the majority of stamps and/or interest.

Of course, I am rather disappointed to find out about all of the various fakes and "favor precancels" that were not officially used but are out there on the secondary market. It kind of makes one cautious to think that you may have found something really nice only to discover it was not an officially sanctioned precancel.