Cut Square Official Business Mystery

Six months ago I bought a lot of cut squares, a trove of 19th and early 20th century material. I am still sorting it out, and trying to solve some mysteries. One of them is this one.

I can't find it in a catalog. I assume it was in the upper right corner of the envelope, but maybe it was just printed next to the official stamp.

Any help?

Thanks. Don

Here is one for sale
http://www.bwdavis.us/meter-preprin...postage.html
Don

I thought I had one as well.

As far as I know, not listed in Scott specialised.
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Here is my guess now: It has no Scott number because it was not, by itself, valid for postage. It was printed in the upper right of the envelope, right next to the stamp, close enough for the cancelling machine to hit it. All are cancelled: mine, the one that's for sale, and Bedrock's. All three are black on off-white.

A fine of $300 would have been awfully steep in the era when official stationary was printed. I assume it is from a later period. Anybody know?

Don

You're right that these were printed at the upper right corner. They fall into the category of permit imprints (among the thousands of varieties) and are certainly beyond the scope of Scott, though there has been some effort towards a catalog of these and there is a wonderful exhibit (by Les Lanphear) of permit imprints out there. $300 was the original penalty and it was intentionally steep at the time; it's never been changed to adjust for inflation though perhaps it should be.

To expand on paperhistory's post, here is a full cover to show the way these were used - with no additional stamps or text. It is easy to imagine early collectors handling these imprints like embossed envelopes and making cut squares from them - particularly since many were on legal-sized envelopes. The oval permits I have reference to are all used by the Department of the Interior and have a date range of 1909-1924, although I suspect they were used in a wider range of years. Value for a cut-square is nil. Value for a full cover would be driven by the cover's postal history such as the cancel.

Thank you, John and History. Just what I wanted to know. So these were used very much as the official postal stationary of the 19th century.

Don

And you can even find ones where officials franked the cover for personal use.

Penalty imprint envelopes have never been cataloged and will never appear Scott unless they get desperate. Penalty imprint envelopes were printed in a variety of sizes, colors, and styles. The penalty clause was mandatory. There were three stamp like designs that were popular (but not required). The original post shows one style, a second style was basically a reduced version of the eagle. The third version was round. The same departments used the same design but many departments did not use any stamp like imprint. The GPO was a popular source for penalty imprinted envelopes but Joe's Print Shop in Anytown, USA could also manufacture penalty imprint envelopes as long as the proper procedure and style was followed.