What Happens When The Pressman Takes A Long Break While Printing

I identified which specific variety is in the wrong color (RF9g); I did not say that they were ALL wrong.

See below for the Andrew Dougherty cancel/surcharge in the normal red, and the same cancel in the violet color that was used by the Standard Playing Card Company (RF9g).

Jim

They probably just used what was at hand for a sheet or two, probably to not waste ink. Still a far cry from simply being sloppy.

More examples of surcharge disasters, for those that might be interested in this area.

Jim

Double surcharge, reading up, in black (RF9k)


Double surcharge, reading down, in black (RF9n)


Double surcharge, reading down, numeral omitted, in black (RF9d variety)


Double surcharge, reading up, in violet (RF9a)


Double surcharge, reading up, in red (RF9l)


Split surcharge (should read "17") (RF6 variety)

If it helps any, I'll maybe modify the term "sloppy" with "indifferent."

But with virtually any other product, if one saw examples such as those shown above, I'm pretty sure that the consensus of opinion would still be "sloppy."

Or much worse.

Jim

Most still look to me like what in stamps would be printers waste. Since we were not there, we don't know what happened but I don't see professional printers having so little pride that they would produce such material without a legitimate reason.

There is one possibility which has not been mentioned. While the ideas of "sloppy" and "indifferent" have been presented, how about "pressured to produce?"

These were small potatoes for the BEP and likely considered something which was a job which had to be done, fit in with all the more important work. These were not the high demand engraved printing jobs, so the BEP (or other printer in some cases) would have wanted to spend as little time on this as necessary, hence the idea of "pressured."

Could that have been a possibility?

BTW Jim, those are some really interesting overprints you presented....

Hi,

The BEP only surcharged the RF16 stamps.

All the rest were done by the manufacturers, themselves.

Which is why there are so many different types and styles.

What is key as to whether they should be considered printer's waste versus the product(s) of an indifferent (or sloppy) printer, is that all of them were actually used on decks of playing cards.

True errors, such as that upside down airplane stamp that I've vaguely heard about, are really uncommon, because there were various quality control measures taken by the printers to specifically identify them before they were released to the public.

The privately applied surcharge/cancels though clearly didn't go through any kind of similar process.

As I wrote, I think that the stamps went from the pressman directly to the clerks that applied the stamps to the decks.

If one or two of these stamps happened to have a double surcharge (or something similar), then you could say that it was just a pressman having a bad afternoon.

But when you take all of the Scott listed playing card varieties together, it's clear that something else was in play.

Whether it was a liquid lunch from time to time, or something else, we may never know.

But there are WAY too many varieties of these stamps than there should normally be.

Jim




Thanks, this is an area that I specialize in (in case that wasn't obvious).

All it would take is one sheet of each to create all the varieties. If the first sheet of the day had to be properly lined up and wasn't for any reason, these would be the result. Since we don't know anything about the equipment used, and they were done in 1918 and not when you were printing, we really don't know why these happened.

To give a little further context to these varieties of combination surcharge and cancellations, let us recall that BEP was overwhelmed at this time (1918). This led Internal Revenue to authorize the F.D. handstamps for the newly created Future Delivery stamps, which Jim and I have pictured in another thread. Although we have never seen them, they also authorized S.T. for Stock Transfer Stamps. Since there were so few playing card manufacturers by this time, they must have authorized the surcharges when the rate on decks of cards went from 2¢ to 7¢. Thus were created the RF5 through RF10. The playing card companies were already cancelling all these stamps, so it was easy to add the surcharged value to the printing plates or in the case of New York Consolidated to do a separate "17" which was applied over the cancellation. New York Consolidated only changed their cancellation plate every two years: 1913, 1915, and 1917. Thus we get the "17" surcharge applied over 1915 and 1917 cancellations. The orientation of the cancellation plates was sometimes reading up and other times reading down. Sometimes the "17" surcharge is right side up and other times is upside down, creating with the combination eight different varieties. Given the practice at NYCC, the cancellations were obviously not a high priority for uniformity of practice. This, I think, explains the double and triple cancels that Jim has shown to us - lack of quality control for the cancellations. The return of the stamps to exchange them for new stamps from Internal Revenue would have led to delayed shipments. By the way, we do not know how much printers's waste was produced in the printing of the cards. But then again the cards were lithographed on different presses, presumably by different printers. At BEP intaglio and surface printing were in different divisions, so the assumption that at the playing card companies the lithography shop was different from the letterpress shop is quite plausible.

Given that attitude at New York Consolidated it is not surprising that we have seen the lack of quality control at The Combine, i.e., Andrew Dougherty, Specialty Playing Card, and U.S. Playing Card. I have always assumed that they maintained the three plants in New York, Chicago, and Cincinnati, using red for the cancelling plate in New York, violet in Chicago, and black in Cincinnati. So the error in color of violet on the Andrew Dougherty cancel shown by Jim is really puzzling to me and may be evidence that some of the Andrew Dougherty cards were in fact produced in Chicago where violet was the order of the day for the cancelling plate. This scenario gives us a much more plausible explanation for the violet error.

As Stampman2002 stated, "pressure to produce" was definitely in the cards at the time. The tax rate had gone up from 2#162; to 7#162; and the playing card manufacturers had agreed to print the new value on the stamp along with their initials and date cancel.

If a mistake was made, it was made on an entire sheet of 200 stamps so a single sheet contained twice the number of stamps as the number of inverted Jenny stamps. PC Manufactures paid to the BEP $14 for each sheet of these stamps.

At that time, a deck could be purchased for 50#162;. So the cost of one sheet of stamps was the price of 28 decks of cards. There was no way they would have thrown away the misprinted sheet of stamps when ultimately it was going to be destroyed when the deck was opened. But fortunately for collectors, many were not destroyed.

Kristin

Hi Kristin,




I see what you did there.



Jim