The Meaning Of 'All Different'

Thank you Don. Again, very interesting. Now I can see that I made the right move to quit collecting every new issue way back in the seventies! Wished I had been that successful on the stock market!

Peter

Is it a coincidence that the number of different stamps issued seems to increase beginning with the end of airmail? Were more options available at that time which required a greater number of denominations?

Now that I think of it, precanceled stamps were issued with the name of a town. "All different" should at least mean, already different at the time of sale, of course. A stamp later defaced with a machine cancel isn't considered different from one later defaced with a hand cancel; but precanceled stamps are already different when issued. Imagine trying to catalog all the different precanceled stamps, given the different perf varieties make the otherwise-same stamps different also. When they made records of which stamps got precanceled and shipped where, they didn't keep track of what the perfs were.

Are you going somewhere with all this?

Peter