Having Trouble Identifying These Cancels.

Hi guys..Any one know what type of cancels these are..?

Robert

Paint brush, but using ink?

Looks like a postal clerk devised a "home made" device for use on parcels/packages. Probably fashioned from absorbent material like cotton fabric, glued to a piece of wood. This would be a forerunner to the magic marker.

Possibly a pre cancel, the way the ink runs off the stamps looks like they were canceled as a sheet and then seperated.

My guess is that he used the brush in the bottle of ink normally used to refresh the ink on his ink pad.

Jarnick, I think you are close. However, it looks like he actually used the ink pad of a narrow minded postal clerk.

I am kind of leaning towards littleriverphil's idea...old fashion brush used to pre cancel a sheet..If it is, it would make for a unique pre cancel type.

Robert

I have had the same query, for 10 years or so.
Never received a definitive answer.

My thoughts tended towards makeshift cancelling on Parcel articles, where the hammer was unable to be employed.

Ok..Are you ready for this..Now remember, I think out of the box.

Here goes..We all know that companies use pre cancelled stamps to get their mail to the postman rather than to a big bin where some one later pulls all those letters out to cancel them on a cancel machine.

Now if I was one of those companies and wanted my mail to get to the receivers asap, and had no more pre cancelled stamps, I would cheat, put a normal stamp on the letter, use a brush to cancel and send it out hoping the post office identified it as a pre cancelled stamp and off to the letter carrier right away..sneaky, but it could work.

Comments...???

Robert

I tend to agree more or less with Rod. My impression is that the Marker Monkey was on the loose again.

Peter

Peter..markers were invented in 1952..

Robert

I ask why post offices dameged the beauty of these

My opinion - not precancels.
a. As can be seen in Rod' images the marks are not all horizontal, some more a blob. Would anyone sit there and make blobs on an entire sheet of stamp to precancel vs. just hitting it with a line across them all?
b. It seems unlikely a PO would precancel large amounts of different denomination (and types) of stamps
c. the perf tips do not seem to show that the stamps were separated after being marked

I think this was a type of early hand cancel 'marker' (as suggested above).
Don

May I suggest that these were used as revenue stamps on cheques (checks). I have quite a few cheques from the 1920s though the 1940s with stamps which have been 'canceled' with a stroke through them using a black wax pencil. I think the financial institutions in this case may have used ink.

Nice suggestion James.
Do we have images?
I noticed with mine, they tended to be higher value stamps, which suggested parcels, but now cheques as well, perhaps.

I have quit a few of these cheques..Will have to ull them out and check your theory.

Robert