US First Issue Revenues - Value Added For Handstamp Cancels

Not really. Eric, Richard, and Dan's websites help, but as with all serious philatelic endeavors, knowledge and experience are the only true way to know.

Reasonable, as with beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. There are no hard and fast catalog values for cancels. If you want a particular example for your collection, ultimately you have to gauge whether you are comfortable with the price asked.

When I first started collecting revenue cancels, I blanched at some of the prices asked for certain cancels, because in my mind everything should be a percentage of Scott, and that number should always be less than 100%. Fast forward, and I now understand that for certain cancels, plate varieties, and documents, the Scott value of the stamps in question is completely immaterial to the market value. It's somewhat nonintuitive for those first getting started.

In retrospect, there are plenty of items in my collection that I overpaid for... but more importantly there are items NOT in my collection that I wish I had overpaid for. That said, over the course of time and exposure to cancels on different venues ( ebay vs. circuits vs. local/regional dealers vs. national dealers vs. national revenue specialists), you will get a feel for what a good price is vs. when someone is gouging.

Will you overpay for something? Yes, absolutely. It is inevitable. Will you enjoy it any less? Likely not. It's a journey of learning and you wind up paying your dues. Eventually though, you will not only become familiar with what the pricing norms are, but your experience will allow you to cherrypick that scarce/beautiful cancel from some dealer's inventory at pennies on the dollar, or hit that Buy-It-Now on ebay and get a screaming deal.

It won't happen overnight, but exposure to the largest amount of items across the widest number of venues will help. At the beginning, you can use Eric Jackson's website, as well as the retail estimates on my website as ceilings to stay under... of course if you find a gorgeous example of a cancel that really "trips your trigger" or sings to you, then feel free to throw guidance and caution to the wind: if it makes you happy, buy it.

Dan says it well. On the documentary and proprietary stamps issued until 1883 you just need experience. And when one pops up that you have never seen and it fits into a niche in your collection, one often throws caution to the wind. My philatelic mentor, the late Ernest Wilkens, told me that he never regretted anything he purchased. The regrets were always the one he passed up.

When you move to the documentary and proprietary battleships we have some really extensive lists of the printed cancels, but like on the earlier issues we no not have pricing guides. I do not recall paying more than $35 on the 1898 printed cancels. But that does not mean that if the right thing turned up I would not go higher. But it would have to fit into the niche of something that I would potentially develop into an exhibit some day.

Nonetheless, you don't have to be an exhibitor to develop those special niches that drive you to pursue exquisite cancels that complete a story in your album.

Thanks to revcollector, revenuecollector, and revenuermd for the advise. I have got some work ahead of me, but it sounds like great fun. I am curious -how long have each of you been collecting revenues?

I'm the comparative NEWBIE, approximately 14 years, seriously for about 10 years.

I have been collecting revenues for 45 years, and Ron for at least that long and probably longer.

I have been collecting revenues since 1957, but began to get fairly serious since about 1968.

Interesting topic and I agree with Dan - if something strikes your fancy, and you hate to pass it up, even if it may be a bit overpriced, buy it!

I ran across this in the "Revenue Unit Columns from The American Philatelist" book by Beverly King/Justin Bacharach/George Turner:




So, since the above was written almost a century ago, does their ballpark of value still hold?

IMO too many variables to try and use a blanket multiplier for any kind of cancel. It all depends on the company, the type of cancel, the ink, the aesthetics, etc., etc., etc.

If the way you collect is to fill the rectangles in a commercial album, then the quote from King/Bacharach/Turner probably still holds. Some will be satisfied with well centered and pretty cancels. And again those guidelines might be relevant.

But there are also many who wish to specialize in insurance company cancels, railroad cancels, medicine company cancels, etc. In the case where a medicine company cancel is from a company that later used a private die stamp, there is additional desirability and accompanying higher price. Those specialists will not be satisfied with the King/Bacharach/Turner guidelines and thus a second way to look at the desirability and value of a stamp.

Why have so many of us become specialists? Because with the specialization comes additional cultural and historical insights. That is why some of us write - to share those insights. That is also why some of us have become exhibitors - again to share our insights. And for us a third set of guidelines is necessary, one that incorporates the identity and the historical insight accompanying that identity.

The existence of three or more ways of judging the importance and value of the cancels creates the complexity that several of us evoke in this thread.

One of the things that strikes me as interesting with revenue cancels is the wide variety that can be found; they range from simple manuscript to fancy cancels. I assume that some offices/companies saw the cancel requirement simply as 'overhead', another cost to be incurred. But other offices/companies saw this an a marketing opportunity and generated elaborated cancels with advertising value.
Don

They were also an anti theft device, since the stamps could be precancelled before use. Most "socked on the nose" handstamps and all the printed cancels were done that way.

Yes, there are a number of precanceled "socked on the nose" cancels. Certainly there is an anti-theft motivation to precancel. But I suspect that there is another motivation, the convenience of precanceling the sheet and then quickly placing stamps on either documents or probably more likely putting them on taxable products without the additional need to cancel the stamps while on such products. Handling the product once (for attaching the stamp) is less labor intensive. Less labor intensive is a powerful motivation.

Photographer cancels is an area where a large percentage of handstamped (and even manuscript) cancels were precanceled, due to the mechanics of how CDVs were stored and the offsetting of ink as it dried.

Then there are what look like handstamp cancels, but were actually printed, e.g., Brady's Bend Iron Co.

http://www.revenue-collector.com/br...ompany.shtml

Great discussion of the various methods and motivations for handstamped cancels! Thank you all for sharing your extensive knowledge of revenues, here and everywhere.