Not Too Fancy? Looking For A Crash Course In Cancellations Please Advise

i realize that most of these stamps have some pretty major faults and little to no value.. my main concern here is identifying which cancels are actually considered fancy. and of those are there any that are especially sought after or maybe just somewhat less common? are there any that are rare enough to give some value to an otherwise worthless stamp? thanks!

In this period, we're usually concerned with killers used to cancel the stamp, not a CDS (circular date stamp) that was intended more to date a cover. So most collectors don't consider the latter to be "fancy" when in a "standard" style (3rd row 4th stamp).

Collectors also usually don't consider standard commercially available targets (1st row 3rd stamp, 2nd row 2nd stamp, 5th row 2nd stamp) and barred circles or squares (3rd row 2nd stamp) to be fancy. The commercially available killers with numbers are borderline fancy. They are included in the Cole catalog http://www.stampsmarter.com/feature...ls_Home.html that covers the Banknote period, as well as other resources that cover earlier periods and the Banknote era.

Fancies are mostly the handmade killers (4th row 4th and 5th stamp, 5th row 1st stamp) plus commercial handstamps with picture elements. ebay sellers will say "fancy" for unrecognizable blobs, but blobs aren't very interesting to most collectors.

These shown are fairly common. A few to be slightly less common (the last 3 stamps noted in the previous paragraph. It helps the value if the cancel can be identified by town, but that be difficult to do. It also helps value to have as complete a cancel as possible as well as being clearly struck.

Hy-brasil is spot on.
On the other hand, I wouldn't describe your stamps as having 'little to no value': there is always plenty of history behind each stamp, in my opinion

ok thank you both.. I think I've got a general idea about what is and isnt "fancy". Do any of the first 9 stamps in the top picture stand out as significantly more valuable than the others? the two 10s are pretty well centered and one of the cancels seems to be pretty light.

ive got 2 watching the first 9 with several days remaining and no bids yet and I am wondering if there is one stamp in particular they may be have noticed.. any ideas?

fancy or not fancy?

The current Catalogue value of the American 10c banks notes (either Sc 187 or Sc 188) is around $30, but most sell for under $10 on ebay. These are the sold listings.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/19th-Centu...045573.m1684

First row; 1c banknote looks like a negitive star, the 3c 1861 has a quartered cork (a hand carved killer), and the 2c brown banknote in the mount has a square grid fancy cancel. The rest are incomplete and difficult to identify.

Not sure why he singled out those 10c stamps, since your two 10c stamps in the first picture are not those stamps. You have two examples there of #209.


The nicest cancel I am seeing so far is the 2c at the right end of the middle row in the second picture. That stamp has a cancel often called a "circle of Vs." It's not rare, and your stamp is ruined by having a piece out of the top, but the cancel is a fancy cancel. The three bar circular grid on the 10c at the other end of that same row is also one of your better cancels. The five bar blue circular grid on the 6c in the first picture would be of some interest if it were a cleaner example.

Some people will tell you that cancellation collectors don't worry as much about stamp condition as they do about the quality of the cancel. That is not true among the top echelon of fancy cancel collectors, i.e. those who exhibit. IMHO they set the pace for the rest of us. There are several factors that come together to make a cancel a desirable item. The topic is big enough that the study of postal markings (marcophily) is a whole division of the hobby.

I would say all are fancy cancels.